


And the Heart Follows

by pokey_jr



Series: The Yeehaw Chronicles [5]
Category: Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Art, F/M, Fix-It, POV First Person, Romance, Slow Burn, entries from Arthur's journal, post-chapter 6
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2019-09-13 06:33:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16887423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pokey_jr/pseuds/pokey_jr
Summary: I am lost. Good and truly, without a map, which in my delirium on the mountain I do not know if I lost it or ruined it or ate it but it is gone. And I am hunted. I feel like a three star animal that’s been run down and shot so many times its pelt could be a sieve. But it keeps getting up. I keep getting up.**Arthur survives the mountain and begins his journey west.





	1. Found

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! There will be spoilers through chapter 6 of the game and beyond. Please see the end of this chapter for more notes.

__

 

_I am lost. Good and truly, without a map, which in my delirium on the mountain I do not know if I lost it or ruined it or ate it but it is gone. And I am hunted. I feel like a three star animal that’s been run down and shot so many times its pelt could be a sieve. But it keeps getting up. I keep getting up._

**  
It is November, near around midnight, and it is too cold and loud to sleep. Wind rattles the south window and finds any crack in the plank walls of my cabin to pry its fingers inside and claw at me. Snow sits heavy on the roof and window sills, making the old beams of this family home creak, as if they complain about aches and pains.

I can feel it too. It’s ready to smother me, strengthened by the minute as walls of it thunder down the mountain. In the morning I’ll have to go out and brave a climb to clear the accumulation and prevent the roof collapsing. Only if the blizzard calms enough that I can see, though.

Aside from that, there is plenty else to worry about. The animals in the barn, chiefly. I had ushered the chickens in there when I had first noticed the dark thunderheads looming over the mountains a few days ago. I count the animals every day, and there is always a chance a fox or coyote could sneak in. They’ve been safe so far, though, thank the lord, but if the barn is infiltrated, it might spook the horses—two enormous Shire stock, and I can just picture the varmint nipping at their legs, making them panic and bolt. Would be a miracle if none of the chickens got trampled.

I roll over to check the pocket watch which I keep on the nightstand. Flickering candlelight glints off its glass face.

Six minutes past midnight.

Too late or too early to do anything worthwhile, so the only thing left is to turn back over, tuck my feet under Ellie’s warm bulk. She’s snuffling quietly, fast asleep and taking up half the bed, her paws twitching in her dog dreams. If only I could get as comfortable as her. The bed is sagging; I’ll have to tighten the ropes. Another unwelcome task for the morning.

This winter has been a miserly one so far. Cold and tight-fisted. Determined to wring the light and warmth from everything. All it takes is for one small thing to go wrong-- usually as a result of the storms-- and then it’ll all fall in sequence. I rely on luck to preserve me, and common sense when it deserts me, which is often.

It is on this long night that I find the man outside.

Just as I’m finally drifting off, Ellie jolts me awake with a deep, booming bark that sets my heart pounding. A couple years up here and I’ve learned to trust her instincts. It takes only a minute to pull on my warmest pants and boots, because screw being a lady. I may be about to get robbed, or worse.

Ellie bounds out the door ahead of me, and I follow with a shotgun in hand, and extra shells in the coat pocket. Inside it was bad, but out here the storm is full chaos.

There is someone collapsed in the snow, about twenty paces away; already a drift of snow is starting to cover him. A huge black stallion dances near him. My initial, uncharitable thought is that it could be a trap. One member of a gang playing dead as if he got thrown from his horse, with others lurking in the treeline, ready to ambush me.

Again, it’s Ellie taking the lead. She’s calm, doesn’t seem scared or on guard. She approaches the body, so I approach too, following the trough she cuts through knee deep snow. That stallion is only getting more irritated.

I have to decide, and quick—my hands are starting to hurt from the cold. Leave him out here? Risk bringing him inside?

The prospect of a guest makes me hesitate; every lecture and warning from Ma act now like fingers plucking strings: notes of uncertainty to make me twinge at the thought of highwaymen and robbers and the cruelty people do to each other. If he’s not dead yet he will be soon. I could let him die out here, or give him some last measure of comfort in warmth and light.

Ellie is now licking his face, her wagging tail kicking up plumes of snow. Sweet girl. He must be good, she can always tell.

So then I have to take him in, of course. In the end it’s the only decent thing to do, though I dread entertaining company. When the storm clears, I’ll send him on his way, and the matter will be concluded.

I remember feeling, at the time, that I didn’t particularly want to help him. My solitude was precious, my routine carefully plotted and curated. And he has the audacity, lying there prone in the snow, to intrude.

Getting him inside is a separate problem entirely. He’s too heavy to drag, and after a couple fruitless minutes of trying from various angles, I have to dash back inside and put on gloves. The storm is only getting worse, enveloping everything in murky darkness, and blasts of snow so thick I can hardly see the cabin. The wind is making my eyes water, it whips breath from my lungs and sound from my lips.

“Shit.” Swearing is futile and satisfying. Don’t have to worry about being a lady out here. “Shit damned devil fucking whorepipe shit shit fuck and damn.” Somehow it helps. Somehow I get him, pace by pace, to the threshold, and up the steps.

Ellie leaps back and forth and around. She thinks we’re playing, and after I dump the man as close to the fire as I can get him, she resumes licking his face. At least that means he likely isn’t dangerous.

I pace for a few minutes, trying to get warm, and wondering who exactly this man is. He looks like a 'Jed’, and since he won’t be waking up any time soon…

Jed it is.

He’s grimy and unkempt, his face half-hidden by a thicket of a beard. His left leg is at a bad angle, bowed out unnaturally. It makes my stomach turn. That’ll have to be dealt with later. He’s getting warm now, that’s something, and the crust of snow and ice on his clothes is starting to melt, and I need to see about getting that horse. I can wonder about who he really is. Later.

This is a very stupid thing to do. Monumentally, catastrophically stupid.

I have everything to lose. Odds are I should leave the beast, not push my luck, because clearly I have none, and that man I rescued is hoarding all of it and he isn’t even awake to appreciate it and thank me.

I'm a goddamn idiot. I go back out with only the lantern. By some miracle his horse hasn’t run off. Jed’s horse. What would a man named Jed name his horse? Jed Jr.?

Jed Jr. stamps and jumps, but doesn’t run.

“Whoahhh, boy.” I set the lantern in the snow. Doubt the stallion can hear me in all this, but it makes me feel better, at least a little. Makes me move slower.

I don’t know if it’s the cold or nerves that have me shaking or both, but I feel a little ridiculous. At least there’s no one around to see my embarrassment.

And no one around to help if he panics and kicks my chest in. I may be independent out here but I can’t chop wood and carry feed with broken ribs.

“There you go, that’s it. You’re okay. You’re okay.” I keep on talking, low and calm. Horses know fear, they smell it and feel it as well as dogs.

The closer I get, the better I realize that this is no ranch horse. He’s as well kept as can be expected way out here, strong and absolutely enormous. Eighteen or nineteen hands tall, and conditioned from weeks upon weeks of running. And, strangely, no saddle. Only a rudimentary bridle and bit.

He whinnies when I finally pat him on the neck. Stay firm, stay confident. He’s scared and cold.

“It’s alright boy, come on.” With a hand on his reins I start to lead him towards the barn and, small mercy, he follows. He has an attitude about it, pulling and stopping, still a little jumpy, but he follows me into the warmth. I think it’s because I promised him apples and peppermints.

“You’re too smart for your own good, ain’t you.” I talk to him while I get him stabled. He doesn’t seem too grateful to be inside. “I’m thinking you might be more trouble than you’re worth, hmm?”

I got no idea why I keep talking to him, even as I pat him. There’s ice built up on his back and flanks. Have to scrape it off, which he barely tolerates.

“Just a little more, boy, hold on. You fussing because it’ll get you another peppermint, is that it?”

He whickers, bobbing his head.

“Yeahhh okay, I know. Almost done. You’re a good boy, ain’t you. But I’ve reconsidered, and decided your name should be Bitey. Jed Jr. is too common for you.” As if in agreement, he nips at my collar when I turn my back to leave, and gets himself one more apple.

Trudging back through my tracks from the barn to the cabin, I feel the exhaustion set in, and the current of it is deep and strong enough to sweep away my uncertainty for the moment. Back inside, and I’m too stiff and tired to even consider moving the man. The most I can do is throw a pelt over him and sit the rocking chair with a loaded shotgun across my lap, and drift to an uneasy sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had this idea kicking around for several weeks since I finished the game, and finally got around to putting it down on paper. Essentially, it's my way of dealing with my feelings about Arthur dying, so I figured a good fix-it romance would make me feel better.  
> Also, I'm trying to write in first person POV instead of second person, which is new for me.  
> As always, I welcome and appreciate feedback.


	2. Awake

__

_Hard to wallow in self pity when a dog wants to be my friend. A big ball of fur, almost as tall as my horse and just as ferocious and stubborn, so who am I to refuse?_

**

“Where’s my horse?”

These are the first words he speaks to me, a day and a half after I found him. His raspy voice jolts me out of my daze while I’m cutting up the few carrots and potatoes that haven’t gone rotten.

“Jesus!” I whirl around to witness him sitting upright. Ellie picks up her head from where she was dozing near him, and apparently senses no threat, because she goes back to sleep.

“He ain’t here. Where’s--” he breaks off in a fit of coughing. “Where’s damn my horse?” That note of urgency grows stronger, and he struggles to stand up. I hold my knife tighter, make no move to help him even as he staggers to the table. That broken leg has to be hurting.

“You gonna answer me or you gonna stand there staring?”

My breath catches in my throat. Even weakened as he is, I can still imagine him lunging over the table; I’d have no chance if he attacked me.

“I asked you a question, girl.”

His voice is low and dangerous and if I weren’t half terrified at the moment I think I could listen to him speak for a while.

_Breathe._ I glance at the deck of cards I’d been passing the time with while he was asleep. It’s still on the table, right there in his reach, and in my mind I try to picture the order they’d been in when I had last shuffled. _Two of diamonds, jack of clubs, seven clubs, king spades, eight diamonds, queen…_

_Count. Count to the ace of spades. Thirty second position._

_Steady._ “I— in the barn. He’s fine, I got him fed and warm.”

That appeases him. And now he’s guzzling straight from the bottle of whiskey I’d left out; maybe it’s nerves that make me blithe. “Well, go right ahead, mister, help yourself, I don’t mind.”

“Thanks,” he grunts. “I won’t burden your hospitality for long, miss. Be on my way soon.”

“Right.” I want to stare. I want to peer at him like he’s a specimen behind glass, but I dare not, so instead I move the cutting board to the table, and steal glances at him from beneath my eyelashes.

He’s a big man, though that was obvious from trying to move him, but he seems somehow bigger when he’s animated. A rough sort of person, outfitted with the accoutrements of a gunslinger, and well-prepared to do violence. His clothes are raggedy, his face gaunt and too pale, expression drawn. I believe mirth might be entirely foreign to him.

“Thanks for, you know, gettin my horse. He’s, uh… well he can be difficult.” He leans back and I’m suddenly very aware of his gaze on me. Sizing me up, it feels like.

I feel my face flush, and twist my still-shaking hands in my apron. “Dragging you inside was no small task, either.”

“Well.” He holds up the liquor—my liquor—and toasts me. “Thank you.”

A tense silence descends between us. Apparently he isn’t going to volunteer any information about himself, but a day and a half is an awful lot of quiet time to accumulate prying questions, and I’ve got plenty.

“You got a name, mister?”

“Arthur. Arthur Morgan.”

“Arthur.” I nod. “Oh. I’d been calling you Jed, for want of a name.”

“Really. You looked at me and thought Jed. What kinda backwater inbred yokel do you take me for?”

I look up from chopping potatoes to give him a pointed expression. He has to be aware of the state of his clothing.

He rubs his beard. “Well who are you, then?”

It crosses my mind to lie, as he very well may have done too. But I tell him true. “Sloan Sterling Bell.”

_“Bell?”_ The word sends him into another fit of coughing, after which he spits blood on the floor.

“As in, church… Are you alright?”

He waves it off. “Fine, I’m fine. Any relation to a Micah Bell?”

“No. Not that I know of. Why?” Friend of Mr. Morgan, is my guess, or more likely a bounty hunter. I watch him keenly, but he only gets around to replying after slugging back another gulp of whiskey, and when he speaks, there is such hollow bitterness in his voice.

“Micah Bell is a good for nothing bastard. Conniving, cheating snitch, and if I ever see him again, I’ll…” he trails off and meets my eyes. I see him, flat and broken and haunted.

A sudden chill seizes me, and I shiver. It seems to break his trance, and he remembers himself, then gets up and hobbles to the hearth to bank the already-roaring fire.

“Are you hungry, Mr. Morgan? You were asleep almost two days.”

“Sure. I won’t turn down a bowl if you’ve got anything on hand. Then I’ll be on my way.”

“Wait, you’re leaving?”

“Like I said, don’t want to be a burden.”

“But you just woke up! And your leg!”

“I’ll manage.”

“You’ll die! And even if you happen upon other homesteads, I ain’t sure they’ll venture a rescue. Not when you might get snowed in with them, and they end up with another mouth to feed through the winter.”

“Oh, so you want to be the one to feed me?” He drawls. “Where’s your fella, anyway? You ain’t got family out here?”

“I ain’t married,” I tell him curtly. “And I have Ellie.”

He turns to look at her. “Think she might be more fur than anything else.”

She perks up at the attention, and to my surprise, gets up and puts her head on his lap.

“Here.” I’m butchering cured shank end from a wild boar I’d trapped some months ago, and I carve off a piece for him to give her as a treat. “She chased off a bear last week, a moose before that. Only critters that still come around are coyotes, sometimes a fox.”

Mr. Morgan is now alternating between stroking her soft, floppy ears, and digging his fingers into the wild mane of fur which protects her neck.

For a time I work on preparing the stew, while he pets Ellie and croons to her about what a good girl she is. It’s hard to reconcile this version of the man with the one who was yelling earlier, and I won’t soon forget the fear he so easily struck in me. I’m not sure why I’m being so accommodating, except it’s clear he’s got no chance on his own.

Hearing another person’s voice in here is off putting, too, after I’ve been here alone for so long. He’s easy to listen to, with a low, gravelly timbre, and a deliberate, wry way of speaking— which makes it all the more a shame that he only gives terse answers to my questions.

We’re in the west Grizzlies, I inform him, hoping to draw out something about him in exchange. West of Lake Isabella, about fifty miles. If it were possible to head exactly due south, you’d end up in Tall Trees.

He says he knows the area, but doesn’t offer anything else, not even which direction he came from to end up in front of my cabin. A cabin, I add, which is not situated anywhere that many people would stumble upon it. Up on a bluff, encircled by pine and spruce trees, and the terrain to reach it is unwelcoming even in decent weather.

He merely shrugs. “All the more reason to get going now.”

I’ve exhausted all there is to be done cutting meat and vegetables, and I cover the pot to let it simmer.

“Well, the stew won’t be ready for another few hours.” And by then it will be dark. “At least stay for a hot meal? You can use the tub to clean up. And you can start out fresh, early tomorrow.”

Only when he narrows his eyes do I finally notice how blue they are, and he could almost be handsome— “Why are you bein so _nice_ , Miss Sterling?”

“Pardon?”

“Nice.” He repeats it in the same tone someone would spit derisive insults. “See, I ain’t used to folks bein nice.”  
He pushes back his chair, stands, and comes towards me, all slow, his boots and spurs punctuating each step.  
I swallow thickly. He certainly has a distinct way of towering over a person and making them feel small. Or maybe that’s just me.

“I’m used to folks shooting on sight. I’m used to men lyin in wait to ambush me, old ladies with shotguns chasing me off their land. Brother and sister who spend too much time together on a pig farm that ain’t got no pigs around.”

“What?”

“I ain’t fallin for it.” He has me backed up against the cabinet, and he’s very close indeed, close enough for me to smell the whiskey on his breath. I feel my face grow warm once again under his scrutiny. His eyes really are striking, and despite the effects of privation, he seems twice my size, barrel-chested and broad shouldered.

Another thing he must be used to is seeing fear in people’s eyes.

It takes all my will not to panic, not to surrender to vivid painful memories, and in my struggle I am frozen and silent and humiliated all over again. When I manage to speak, my own voice sounds thin and distant. “May I remind you, Mr. Morgan, that I found you half dead in a blizzard, and at risk of personal injury, sheltered you and your horse. You were asleep for a day and a half in front of my hearth, during which I did not rob or molest you. I’m beginning to regret my decision.”

His expression softens, or maybe I’m just imagining it, and then he turns away, coughing violently. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll be gone in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One thing I mean to do for most of the chapters is draw & hand write Arthur's journal entries which precede each of Sloan's POV. I retroactively added the entry for the first chapter, so please go take a look if you haven't seen it yet (and sorry for potato quality, I don't have a scanner or a good camera.) I'm not the most artistic person, but including visuals of the journal was so important to me for this fic-- hopefully by the time I'm done writing, my drawing skills will have improved as well.  
> Lastly, the fic WILL get to that explicit rating... at its own pace :) Thanks for reading.


	3. Reticence

__

_If luck is the only thing that followed me down that mountain, I would eat my hat, had I not given it to John. Hope he is well, and behaving himself. Perhaps finding amusement in my old journal. This new one needs to be filled, for whatever time I have left._

**

He doesn’t start out early the next morning. Another storm rolls in, dumping several more feet of snow, and leaving it around five feet deep— nearly above my head. It would be stupid to try to set out in it. I know it, he knows it, and he paces around grumbling expletives before sitting down and accepting a cup of coffee.

A single room cabin is a very small space to share with another person. I set up a bed roll for him in one corner, and hang a sheet as a curtain. Mr. Morgan keeps his distance. I sense it. I know he watches me shrewdly, though I doubt he means anything by it.

He carries little of the prideful aggression I’m familiar with from other men. Men like him, especially, in his line of work. But he is possessed of a large and quiet kindness. Some months later, I recall: that’s the way I know him first. Arthur struggles to reconcile his innate compassion with his penchant for violence.

And oh, yes, he does have a talent for it. He is swift and unwavering and professional. He excels at intimidation, understanding well the towering figure he imposes. But in those first few weeks of our acquaintance, I did not see much of that outlaw persona, as he was very focused on being grumpy and downtrodden.

For the second time in a week I ascend to the roof to clear snow. It’s a dreary task, the only part of which I enjoy is my breath puffing out in the freezing air, and the muted stillness all around. Through and above the tall pines I can see the Sisters to the north, draped in mantles of dark heavy cloud. More storms to come, more cloistered days to wonder who, exactly, my strange guest is.

We do a quiet dance around the matter, his reticence allowing my imagination to draw increasingly fantastical conclusions with regards to his profession, and his mysterious injuries and illness, which he dislikes acknowledging. I do my best not to show him too much sympathy.

There is a tint of suspicion in our curiosity about each other, and it colors our few interactions with tension. I still don’t know much about him other than his name, though he’s a wanted man, clearly. His clothes are marked with bloodstains and bullet holes. When he isn’t pitching in on chores, he spends hours taking apart and cleaning his two pistols, and when he finishes those, works on my shotgun and bolt action rifle.

“Thank you, Mr. Morgan.” I pick up the rifle after he’s done with it, operate the bolt a couple times. “It’s much smoother now.”

“Well there was a lot of rust. You don’t use that thing much, do ya?”

“I’m a lousy shot.”

He clears his throat. “I’m sorry to ask, Miss Sterling, but could I trouble you for a straight razor, if you happen to have one?” He pulls at his bushy, untamed beard.

“I’m not certain I do.” But I find one in a chest with some of Shel’s old things. It’s as disused as the rifle, and Mr. Morgan has to sharpen rust spots off the blade. I sit at the table with a cup of hot spiced cider, with some mending work to keep me busy. Easy things— reinforcing loose seams, patching elbows of my long sleeved blouses— so I can watch him surreptitiously.

He does it at the washstand in the corner, the rhythm of scraping and tapping and rinsing punctuated by more coughing.

If Shel could see the flourishing beard his razor was now being used to shave, I don’t know if he’d be jealous or happy. “That used to belong to my brother,” I remark. “He never had much use for it, could only grow wispy little patches.”

“That so? Where is he now?”

“Dead. He was only thirteen, so who knows, maybe he would have needed that razor eventually.”

Mr. Morgan, with his back to me, stiffens for a moment. “Sorry.”

“It was years ago. It’s still— I still dream about him sometimes, and it’s so real, like all I gotta do is wake up and he’d be there.”

“Some wounds never quite heal.”

I set down the dress I’m working on and take a sip of cider, just to warm my fingers on the cup. They’re getting stiff, and making my stitching sloppy. “You got any family?”

The answer is a brusque ‘no’.

Let it drop. I can tell when to leave well enough alone.

“There we go.” He wipes his face clean with a cloth, pats dry, and comes over to me. “Did I miss any spots? That mirror is pretty cloudy.”

The sight of his bare face does nothing to quell the curiosity; I blink stupidly, because I wasn’t expecting him to be, well, handsome.

His features come close to being brutish, though symmetry and proportion redeem him. He has a scar on his chin, and thinner, lighter scar diagonally across the bridge of his nose. Oh, how I long to ask how he got them. The answers are probably mundane. Brawling, likely. He has a build and demeanor fit for a pugilist.

Perhaps I’ve been out here alone too long. Perhaps I’m starved for the company I tell myself I don’t care for.  
Perhaps I should stop staring, and answer him.

“Uh, no. Nothing missed.”

He quirks a smile that makes my breath catch. “Guess I’m fit to rejoin polite society.”

If he’s going to keep smiling at me like that I think it would be safer for him to keep a beard.

**

We establish a routine without much effort. Ellie quickly takes to sleeping by his side, and I harbor jealousy about that. Plus then my feet are cold. He needs the warmth more, however; there aren’t enough blankets, and I hear him coughing through the night.

He always manages to get up earlier than me. Most often I wake up hearing him making a pot of coffee, but I stay in bed until he takes a cup with him outside when he goes to check on the horses and the chickens. When I get up, I make breakfast, and bring him a bowl of it along with a second cup; he shakes out his frozen hands and sips it while petting Ellie.

It’s a noticeable difference, having another person helping with chores, even if he’s two coughs away from being an invalid. (Again, I dare not suggest he take a break.) He does more than his share, much more than he should, given his health, accomplishing it all on a limp, which he tries to hide. He mucks the stables, feeds the animals, chops firewood, and catches fish from beneath the frozen stream, where we also draw water. Even shoots a few rabbits. This early in winter they’re still fatty enough that they taste rich and not too stringy.

Mr. Morgan is always appreciative, and I’m glad to see that his cheeks seem to be filling in somewhat, now that he’s eating.

“Whiskey?” I offer one night, as he’s digging in to more of the rabbit, the best cuts of which I’d cooked with boar and foraged root vegetables and herbs.

“Sure.” He takes one shot, then a second. “I hope you don’t think I need this to wash down your cooking, Miss Sterling. It’s miles better than Pearson’s—“ he breaks off coughing, and quells it with more whiskey.

His cheeks get ruddy when he drinks. “Pearson?” I prompt.

“Simon Pearson. Fella I used to run with. Awful cook. Navy man.”

“My pa was in the Navy. A gunner’s mate.”

He finishes his bowl, gets up. “That so?” He ambles to the hearth, picks up one framed photo from the mantelpiece. “Is this him?”

“Mmm,” I affirm through a mouthful of food.

He looks from the photo, to me, and back—for a moment it seems he might say more, confide that this Pearson character is the one who shot him in a leg over a few dollars in a robbery, or some equally thrilling tale, but he shares nothing else. He replaces it, and strikes a match on his boot to light a cigarette.

**

One morning I slip into the barn, Ellie at my heels. Mr. Morgan hears us and comes over from where he was brushing Betsy, the larger of my two Shires.

Leaning against a post, he hooks his thumb in his gun belt and smiles, slow and warm.

It strikes me deep, I stop in my tracks.

“Well hey, pretty girl,” he drawls.

I nearly let go of his breakfast. Did he just…?

Before I comprehend what’s happening, Ellie bounds ahead of me, tail wagging, and positions herself in exactly the right spot to shake off all the snow in her fur, and onto myself and Mr. Morgan. He kneels, awkwardly with his bad leg, to pet her and lavish her with attention.

“What you got for me this morning, Miss Sterling?”

It takes me a moment to answer. _Hey, pretty girl._ That’s going to rattle around in my head for a while. “Um, coffee. Eggs and bacon and grits.” Which I almost dropped, thanks to him.

Ellie and I keep him company while he eats, Ellie at his feet hoping for scraps. I get around to brushing Bingo, my other horse, and then his stallion— who I found out is called Parsifal, and not Bitey. Mr. Morgan had had a good chuckle about that.

“Weather’s looking promising,” he comments, followed by a hacking cough.

“I ain’t sure I understand why you’re so anxious to leave, Mr. Morgan.” It seems he mentions every other day that he’ll be on his way soon. As if that should reassure me. Ellie will be sad and confused when he goes, I just know it. I expect she’ll sleep in his corner for a while, and sniff around the stables looking for him.

“Truthfully, I ain’t. You’ve been more than kind, but trouble’s had its way of finding me my whole life, and it’s just your bad luck I happened to darken your door instead of collapsing somewhere else.”

“Trouble?”

Some deeper pain than simply ‘gang squabbles’, or ‘bank heist gone wrong’ shades his features. “Trouble. And I don’t want to bring none of it down on you, Miss. You’ve been—“ he coughs, tries to clear his throat. “You’ve....” He doubles over, wheezing, and can’t seem to catch his breath.

“Are you alright?”

He waves me off. “I’m-- I’m fine. I ain’t tryin to be dramatic.”

Then he keels over.


	4. Belmont

__

_Met a woman about a week ago. She seems determined to go against her nature and all good sense, in order to help me spend my last days in comfort. Ridiculous girl. Frightened like a doe one moment, and stubborn as an ox the next. And I expect I shall make a mess of the situation, or a fool of myself, sooner or later._

**

“Mr. Morgan!” I drop the horse brush and rush to his side. “Mr. Morgan, are you alright?”

He’s clearly not: the color he’d regained since I had first found him has ebbed away, his eyes are sunken and glassy. I put my hand to his forehead. He’s running a fever, I think. Hard to tell when the ambient temperature is so cold.

“No need to fuss, woman, I’m—“ he breaks off coughing, trying to wave me away, but even now he can’t resist a dry comment. It would be reassuring, if he didn’t look so ghastly. “Well, I feel about how I look.” He squints at me. “Maybe worse, goin’ by your expression. You really can’t keep a straight face, can you? You play poker? We should play poker, I’ve seen you with that deck of cards.”

“Can you stand? We should get you inside, sit by the fire a spell, that might clear it up.”

Through terrible coughing, and spitting up blood, he manages to convey that I should stay back. “It won’t. I got-- I’m sick. Consumption. TB.”

“Oh.” The farthest away I get is sitting back on my heels. “Oh,” I repeat dumbly. How could I be so foolish? How could I not see? I shove aside the strange, sad ache this revelation has given me. He’s just a traveler who happened to stumble at my doorstep. Might as well be a stranger. “How long?”

“‘Bout six months, I’d say. Maybe seven.”

My hands are getting cold, and I twist them in my skirt to warm them. Mr. Morgan pushes himself to sit upright, leaning against a post. He tilts his head back and manages some deep breaths, which billow into the cold air. The rise and fall of his broad chest is mesmerizing to watch, and it crosses my mind, strangely, that I could move closer, and lay my head there. Just there, on his chest, with my head tucked under his chin, and I could enjoy the warmth of his skin through his shirt. He might even stroke my hair, murmur _pretty girl_ as he does.

He looks over, catches me staring, and asks wryly, “you tryin to remember where you were six months ago? I hear counting backward is hard for some folks.”

“Uh. No! I was here.” I clear my throat and quickly find something interesting to look at in the rafters of the barn.

“Six months ago I was robbing folks who couldn’t afford to be robbed,” he says with a plaintive sigh before getting a flask out of his jacket.

“Would you still be doing that if you weren’t here?”

“No.”

“There’s a doctor,” I begin, after a stretch of silence. “Lives by himself, some miles up the canyon.” I don’t rightly know what I’m doing, offering to help this man, again, but charity escapes my lips as easy as breathing. Plus I’m starting to get restless cooped up just me and him. In some ways it was easier alone.

He frowns at me all the same. “Don’t know what a doctor can do for me. I’ve had this cough for months now. Figured I was pretty much in the ground.”

“Well… he’s not exactly a real doctor.”

His eyebrows go up.

“No, no, listen. He’s an herbalist. If you’ve already tried modern treatments and they didn’t help, he might have something else.”

He snorts. “You expect me to trust some quack hiding out in the mountains?”

“Could make you more comfortable? Second opinion? We can make it there and back in a day.”

He shifts in order to see out the gap in the barn door, and takes his time agreeing. “Well, alright. We’d better get going so we don’t get caught in that storm.”

I hadn’t expected him to go along so easily, but it gives me less time to have to examine why, exactly, I am compelled to help this man. “I’ll get the horses saddled up, then.”

“You, uh… you should probably ride with me.”

He’s right. As he points out, while I hurry to saddle up Parsifal, neither of my two horses will be fast enough to keep up, and besides, with his leg he can’t mount without help. I save him the indignity of mentioning that in his state he’s liable to fall off. A man like him, unable to sit a horse— whoever his associates were before he met me, they likely wouldn’t hold back ridiculing his weakness.

“Get some supplies, too. Dry food, and that rifle of yours.”

“Alright.”

I return to the barn with a satchel, water canteen, and having changed into sensible trousers. Mr. Morgan instructs me how to stow the rifle long-wise in the saddle cinches. After locking all the doors, with Ellie in the barn, we mount up.

This is another slow ordeal. I get on Parsifal first, wondering if he might object and buck me off. But he’s calm, and Mr. Morgan hobbles around to the right. While grabbing the saddlehorn and my hand, he puts his right foot in the stirrup and heaves his lame left leg up and over. I can’t help wincing as I hear him groan. The herbalist had better look at that leg as well.

“You’ll have to take the reins, Mr. Morgan. My feet don’t reach the stirrups.”

“Fine,” he rumbles, settling in closer behind me. “Just tell me where to go. This healer better have a goddamn miracle cure.”

I’m now closer than I ever expected to be to that broad chest I’d been daydreaming about.

I consider warning him against trying anything funny, then reconsider. I don’t think he’s that kind of man. I hope. Unease burrows in the pit of my stomach. I should know better than to trust people, but there is something that draws me to Mr. Morgan, something intriguing in the contrast of his nature.

Besides… he smells nice. A sweet spice of liquor and tobacco mingled, woodsmoke and the wax he uses to weather-treat his clothes.

He spurs Parsifal into a trot, and not having my feet in stirrups makes for an overly bouncy ride. The second time my head cracks against his chin, he wraps one arm around my waist and pulls me firmly against him. No explanation. No apology for being too forward. Just holds me, his arm under my breasts and my back flush against his chest, and oh _lord_ , I’m sure he can feel my bottom, too, with the movement of the horse being as it is.

Warmth suffuses me, an illicit secret feeling, which I can’t very well ignore with him at my back, and my legs spread. _Pretty girl…_ the image plays in my mind, and I’m grateful he can’t see my face at the moment.

We ride north-northwest, through Whitman’s Pass, a relatively flat trail which Mr. Morgan rightly determines is prime territory for wolves.

There was news of a caravan of settlers ambushed here a few years ago, I tell him. That was in the spring, though.

“Hmm,” he grumbles.

“We’re making good time,” I comment, for probably the fifth time since we were just a mile from my cabin.

“Why are you helping me?” He demands suddenly. “Why’re you going out of your way, what do you expect?”

I wonder if he can feel my heart beating faster. Were his arm not holding me here on this horse, I’d back away, withdraw and keep silent.

“I don’t believe making a bad man suffer will turn him good, Mr. Morgan.”

He laughs like he doesn’t believe me. “I got no use for your platitudes. You mean to tell me you’re really helping a stranger out of the goodness of your heart?”

“And you haven’t? It’s not too hard when it’s dropped in one’s lap. I ain’t a nun. Not like I was looking for you or anything.”

“Somehow I don’t picture a woman like you content playing nursemaid to an old man.”

_A woman like you._ There’s some twist in his tone, and if I weren’t convinced he resents me for snatching him from death, I’d think it sounded like admiration. “Really, you’re helping me more than I’m helping you. The chores and such. Ellie’s really taken to you, and it’s nice having the game you hunted for meals, and I—” am rambling. “Look. The night I brought you in, it was one of those situations where you have a very clear, momentary thought: that what you’re doing is stupid, and it would be smarter to be a coward.”

He hums, and holds me a little tighter when he feels me shiver. “I understand, Miss Sterling. You gotta do right by what you believe in.”

Much of the rest of the ride passes in silence that is considerably more comfortable than when we started out, though it leaves me to fret about Mr. Morgan’s health.

He is dozing upright in the saddle when we come into view of Belmont’s place.

“Mr. Morgan.” Without thinking, I grab his thigh to rouse him. The muscle twitches under my hand, thick and powerful like the rest of him, and like a spark in kindling, inappropriate thoughts consume me.

I wonder if my proximity affects such keen awareness of physicality as his does for me. In his arms, I feel steady, and safe, and I would very much like to be able to turn around, for him to tip my chin up, give me a rueful smile, and then lower his mouth to mine—

“I’m awake.”

So I yank my hand away, and hope he didn’t notice anything.

Dismounting is just as awkward as mounting up was, and I try to help him without seeming like I’m helping. The only thing he allows is for me to lead Parsifal, hitch him to the post by the trough, and reward him with a mealy apple for carrying us here so quickly.

“You sure this feller is home?” Mr. Morgan asks as we climb the steps.

I knock on the door. “No— Belmont? Mr. Renaud?” I’d neglected to mention that there is a good chance that Belmont had gone down to Blackwater for the winter, or further west, to a mining town called Calico, but Mr. Morgan’s luck holds once again.

We hear shuffling inside, and the door swings open.


	5. Cure

__

_I want to tell her that she is wrong to show me kindness. When she smiles I can’t help but think back on all the wrong I’ve done. A better man would be ashamed._

**  
“Sloan.” A handsome, dark-skinned man with even, delicate features greets me with a wan smile, which vanishes when he looks over at Mr. Morgan. I don’t even have a chance to make introductions before Belmont hustles us inside.

“Good lord, what did you bring me?”

“Did you say ‘Renaud’?” Mr. Morgan asks.

Belmont and I ignore him; Belmont maneuvers him onto a cot in the center of the room, all while peppering me with incisive questions about Mr. Morgan’s condition.

How long has he had the cough? Anything else accompanying the cough, such as chills, aches, excessive mucus? The fever? How did he break the leg, and when? Did you say he’s been walking around on it? Since you found him? And the cough was getting better until it got worse?

Belmont tuts at nearly all of my answers, pausing the interrogation only to ask —

“Your name, mister?”

“Arthur Morgan.”

— and he tuts at that answer too. He moves with graceful authority around the room, ordering me to sit on a rickety stool in the corner, out of the way, and repeatedly pushing Mr. Morgan to lie down when he tries to sit up.

“Wormwood,” he mutters to himself. “Willow bark, rhodiola… a poultice, maybe… Arthur, take off your trousers, I need to get a look at that leg. Or I can cut them off, got shears around here somewhere.”

“Should I go outside?” I get halfway up from my seat, and Belmont jumps at my voice, as if he’d forgotten I was there.

“Good lord, no. There’s comfrey just there on the counter— yes, the big bunch— mash that all up with the mortar and pestle, and a handful of flour. Now, Arthur, I have some good news and bad news.”

“Does any of it have to do with disrobin in front of a lady?”

“I’m afraid it’s nothing so titillating. Sloan said a doctor told you that the cough is tuberculosis? Consumption.”

“That’s right. You any relation to an Alphonse Renaud?”

Belmont looks at him askance, replies ‘yes’, but I have to turn away, and focus on grinding the comfrey, because Mr. Morgan is removing his trousers.

“I thought you looked familiar. Your daddy’s a doctor too, ain’t he?”

“Ain’t no ‘too’. Turn over on your side. I never got a license.”

“Well I can see that,” Mr. Morgan drawls, before yelping in pain. “Y’know your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired. What the hell was that for?”

“Like I said, I ain’t a doctor. Gotta see how deep the bullet went. If you intend to walk without pain again, I’m going to have to remove it.”

I listen with fascination. More tidbits about Mr. Morgan’s past, and Belmont’s too— a decent man, but one who I had always thought disliked me, even though we traded goods during warmer months. Fresh eggs from my chickens in exchange for his medicinal expertise, which in my opinion borders on the supernatural. With Belmont’s cures I’ve never stayed ill for long.

Belmont applies something to numb the pain, and talks to Mr. Morgan throughout the operation. Says he was going to have a medical practice, like his father, but a bit of local trouble, some good old boys, and Belmont, well—

“I ain’t got to apologize for doing nothing wrong. Daddy said I should, said it was worth it, if I would just _humble myself_ — not hurting you, am I, Arthur?”

“I’m alright.”

“Good. How’d you get this, anyway? You lookin for a fight?”

Mr. Morgan grunts. “Were you?”

Belmont chuckles. “I’ll tell you what, if I didn’t know better, I’d say fights tend to come lookin for me.”

This comfrey is probably about as mashed as it can possibly get, but I don’t want to interrupt, especially with Mr. Morgan in a state of undress.

“Your father was a good man. Met him in Rhodes, helped him get his wagon back from some moonshiners down in the swamp.”

“My father was a fool. He didn’t give you nothing for your cough?”

“Didn’t know I was sick, myself. Not when I met him.”

“Well. I’ll mix you up something for it, but nothing’s going to help as much as rest and warmth.” (I hear the displeasure in Mr. Morgan’s grumbling acknowledgment.) “Can you remember anyone you spent a lot of time around who was afflicted with consumption? Your wife, maybe? Were you tending to a sick relative?

“Weren’t married. All I know is some poor bastard coughed in my face and maybe two months later I was spitting up blood.”

“In your face? Is that all? Who was this man?”

Mr. Morgan suddenly sounds shifty. “He weren’t nobody important. Just collecting a debt.”

“Was he able to pay you?”

“Oh, I got the money.” He breaks off coughing. “From his widow.”

Belmont huffs out a breath, followed by a very quiet ‘good lord’, and takes a moment to gather himself. “Well. If you’ve lasted this long, and running yourself ragged the whole time, you’ll probably outlive it, then, though I must say, awful bad luck how you contracted it. That ain’t normal. Sloan. You got that comfrey ready?”

I do, and had been steadfastly pretending I wasn’t done with it, in order to face away and give Mr. Morgan privacy. Belmont seems to have no such concerns.

“Bring it here, then.”

With hesitation, I obey, and follow Belmont’s instructions in applying it to Mr. Morgan’s bare leg. It doesn’t look as bad as I expected, though there’s a knot of scar just below his knee; I spread the poultice around the bandaged area, trying to pay as little attention as possible to the exposed thigh which I had grabbed only a short time earlier. He has a cloth over most of his lap for modesty. Thankfully, he makes no lewd comments or gestures to embarrass me, like I know some men would. _Most_ men, rather. At least in my limited acquaintance, before I came to live out here.

We don’t stay for much longer after that. Belmont mixes a concoction, and watches keenly to ensure Mr. Morgan drinks it all. I gather it’s vile, because at the first sip Mr. Morgan declares it tastes like rancid piss, and upon finishing it indulges in some colorful expletives. I make note in my head of some of the more creative ones.

With a bottle in hand— Belmont’s own recipe of four thieves vinegar— we depart while the sun is low in the clear afternoon sky.

Mr. Morgan had divulged an awful lot about himself, answering questions I had been too cowardly to ask. I tamp down my worries which surfaced upon seeing him so vulnerable and indisposed. I’ve now learned more about him than I think I ever really want him to know about me. He said himself he ran with a gang, did bad things, but collecting debts from the sick and weak— seems to me, the man he used to be would prey on the man he is now.

And now, right now, he is quiet and solid and warm at my back. He’d wrapped his arm around me shortly after mounting up, as natural as you please, and had even been singing trail songs, in his low, gravelly voice. I think it’s whatever Belmont made him imbibe, but he’s already coughing less; soon he dozes off, snoring softly in my ear.

The return ride takes us well past sunset, even though I take a meal in the saddle. A gibbous moon gives some light to go by. Parsifal does the rest, his steps well-placed and sure in the deep snow. By the time we crest the ridge, with only a stand of trees and less than a quarter mile from the cabin, I’m finally starting to feel the length of the day set in.

I’m exhausted, my thighs are sore from riding, I don’t know what to think about Mr. Morgan. Was it only this morning that he had collapsed in the barn?

Speaking of which… he shifts behind me. “Miss Sterling. We back yet?”

“Yeah.”

He reins in Parsifal, just inside the tree line, and rummages for something in the saddlebag. Binoculars. “You didn’t leave a lamp burning, did you?”

“What, and waste oil?”

“Then it looks like you got some visitors.”

That’s when I hear it— barking. Faint, muffled. “Mr. Morgan, do you—?”

“Yeah. Must be Ellie, and she don’t sound too happy.”

“Can you see who they are?"

He huffs out a tense breath, doesn’t answer.

“Mr. Morgan?” I lower my voice. “Mr. Morgan, I think they’re trying to get in the cabin. I’m going to call out—“

“You’ll do no such thing,” he growls, letting go of the reins to clap his hand over my mouth, and his arm around my waist tightens, holding me in place.

Bile rises in my throat, along with suffocating panic. It overwhelms logic, makes me blind for a moment to the fact that it’s Mr. Morgan behind me— kind, teasing, gentle Arthur— and not _him_. I have to get out of here, away, I have to _run_.

Parsifal, sensing the tension, gets jumpy underneath us. Mr. Morgan releases me in order to calm him, and then speaks: “I ain’t gonna tell you to trust me. Real trust don’t work that way, can’t just demand it from someone. So for now, right now, I’m asking that you do as I say, and if you got a problem, stay outta my damn way.”

I draw a shaky breath, the frigid air helping marginally to clear my head. “Ain’t no problems here, sir.”

“Alright. Now help me off this horse and give me that rifle you brought. Quickly now, girl.”

With his support I swing one leg up over Parsifal’s neck and slide down, as smooth and quiet as possible. When I pass Mr. Morgan the bolt action rifle, he loads and chambers a round, operating the bolt slowly.

The noise, I realize. The noise would carry and give away our position.

Those two men don’t seem like travelers who have lost their way. Too well dressed, I see, as we creep closer. About forty paces away, and Mr. Morgan and I take cover behind a large fallen tree. I got no idea how he isn’t writhing in pain on account of his leg.

Crouching in the snow, I’m feeling steadier than a moment ago. My heart isn’t beating so fast, and I’m glad Mr. Morgan is by my side. I move to peek over the log, straining to see or hear anything about the strange men.

“Marston led me to the grave—“

“—and you dug it up?”

“No body. Some deer bones...”

“Are you going to shut that damn dog up or do I need to do it?”

Back where we left him in the tree line, Parsifal whinnies.

One of the men whirls at the sound, brandishing a lantern. “Who goes there? Show yourself!”

As quickly as I duck back down, Mr. Morgan pops up and cracks off a shot. It’s followed by a pained cry and ‘my hand!’ and then bullets coming back at us. Splinters fly overhead, and hunkering next to me, Mr. Morgan unholsters his other sidearm and proffers it.

“Know how to use this, Miss Sterling? It’s double action, pretty much idiot-proof.”

“My surname is Bell, not Sterling,” I hiss. It shouldn’t matter in the moment, but goddamnit there are people shooting at me.

“This really ain’t the time, _Miss Sterling_. You know my feelings on the name Bell.” And he’s up again, revolver in hand, fires once, though I can’t see at what. All I can see is him, his handsome features set in a fierce scowl as he squints with the lantern light in his eyes. Were it not for all his ruthless intensity, I would swear he’s having fun.

“I don’t, really.” I say, when he’s safely down again. “Sounds like a fascinating story.”

“Ah, I doubt it would hold your attention. Too long for now.” With the rifle this time, he takes a shot, and just like that, the rest of the gunfire ceases.

Quiet and still once more, though my ears are ringing. We make our way to where the bodies fell. They’re a grisly scene, cast in yellow. Where one man’s right hand should be, there is only a bloody stump, and a hole between his eyes. The other fellow is perfectly intact, except for his head. Must have been the rifle shot. At this range, it opened a window in his skull.

I realize I’m shaking again, shock and excitement flooding in all at once, several minutes late. I can’t speak. Can’t move. _That didn’t take very long_ , I think distantly. _You could tell me the story now_. He killed them so efficiently. Probably would’ve been even faster at it without me as a distracting liability.

“Miss Sterling.”

_Count_. I wish I had cards in my hand. I make myself move, fingers first. It’s all I can do, imagining edge after edge after edge as I riffle a deck, knowing by touch and memory, where every card is.

“Sloan.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “You, uh… alright?

I look up to see him very close to me indeed, and I nod, the heavy weight of his touch both reassuring and thrilling. “Yes, Arthur.”

The age lines in his forehead soften when he smiles. “You did good. Why don’t you go see to Ellie and the horses? I’ll clean this mess up. Go on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the greatest mystery of the game is Arthur's hair color. like in the old photo of him and Dutch and Hosea, it looked nearly black, but in the game it's like a faded gold/dirty blond.


	6. Lucky

__

_Can men be witches? I ain’t educated enough to know. Lenny could have told me, or Hosea. Recently met a feller up in the Grizzlies. Belmont Renaud, son of a man I met months ago, and as long as I’m being visited by ghosts from my past, it would be nice to see Sean and Kieran too._

**

We bury the bodies the following day.

Arthur hoists one each over Betsy and Bingo’s backs (they are happy to get the exercise.) and we walk about half a mile down the creek to find a piece of ground soft enough to dig in.

Arthur.

Propriety dictates that I call him Mr. Morgan. It’s hard not to think of him as Arthur now, after surviving a shootout side by side, although I’m sure it was nothing for him. I’m certain the men we are burying were on his trail. They were no ordinary thieves, and my cabin is too remote. The fact that Arthur came across it that night only makes him very lucky.

Clearing the snow and digging a wide ditch is an arduous task, and one I insist that I don’t need any help with. Arthur relents and sits on a boulder nearby. I steal glances at him between rounds hacking at the frozen earth. On his lap is his journal, an object of mystery and fascination for me. Normally he puts it away when he sees me coming, as if he doesn’t want to be asked about it.

This morning is different. He smiles when he catches me looking at him, seems at ease when he kicks out his legs and lights a cigarette. That has to be close to his last one from the pack. Soon he will have to use the tobacco I dried over the summer and roll his own.

I stare at his outstretched legs for too long. Can’t help it. They fascinate the prurient side of my mind— how sturdy and powerful they are, and the solidity of his thigh muscle when I’d touched his leg to wake him.

 _Should’ve held on longer._ That’s the prurient side talking, the side I should ignore. I jab the shovel into the ground with renewed energy. I’m used to labor, what with the horses and other chores that come with homesteading, but this is tough. It’s even making me sweat in the cold, which Arthur helpfully points out when I come over to take a break.

“Well, look at you. Sweatin like a sinner in church.” He takes a long, lazy drag on his cigarette. “Got anything you need to confess?”

As a matter of fact… if I’m not careful I’ll wake up one morning and have to admit to myself that I’m sweet on Arthur Morgan. I could just listen to him talk all day as it is.

“Mr. Morgan,” I begin, brushing away snow from the rock and sitting next to him. “I gotta ask. What did you mean last night? You said I did good, all I did was hide. I didn’t even shoot.”

“I told you to do as I say or stay out of the way. You kept your head, didn’t panic.”

“Oh.” I lapse to silence, trying to rub warmth back into my fingers. That’s one thing I like about being around Arthur. I never feel rushed or pressured in conversation with him. I think we respect each other’s pace.

He offers me the cigarette, and we pass it back and forth until I realize what I really want to say. “I should— I mean, I don’t feel bad.”

Arthur swigs from the flask he keeps in his jacket, which I interpret as ‘continue’.

“I don’t know why I don’t feel worse. We killed them.”

“I killed them.” He exhales smoke. “And I’m sorry you had to see it.”

It’s not alright, but I say it is anyway, and deflect by asking how he’s feeling.

“Pretty good, I guess. If I didn’t know better I’d say that Belmont feller worked some kinda magic, and, ah, I really didn’t expect to be around much longer... My leg ain’t so sore at least.”

“Maybe I’m just hopeful but your cough don’t sound so bad either.”

He sighs. “I’m waitin to get restless again. Feel bad I won’t be able to help out as much.”

“Well. I think I dug deep enough. Would you…?” I incline my head towards the bodies.

“Sure.” He drawls, then leans in close with a teasing smile. “You know you don’t gotta whisper. They can’t hear you no more.”

**

Through to mid December, I am granted a couple weeks of decent weather, along with Arthur’s continued presence. Unfortunately it does not take long for him to get restless again.

Rest and warmth. That’s what Belmont ordered. Arthur is terrible at both of these, and even worse at accepting care with grace. He is not good at sitting still. It makes him irritable.

He still wakes earlier than me, brews the coffee a little stronger than I like, goes out to tend to the horses, and keeps snow cleared from around all the buildings to relieve some of the weight on the walls.

Despite all this, the prescribed warmth and rest seem to be helping. His limp is less pronounced, his cough abated. I am hopeful for his recovery; he’s pessimistic and dismissive about it, as if he feels he doesn’t deserve good health.

Finally I have to insist that he sit down and stop making himself so useful. I can teach him to mend clothes, if he wishes, or darn socks, or I have some yarn and a hook, he could start crocheting another blanket, since my oldest one is getting holes from moths—

“Fine, fine,” he grumbles, stomping snow off his boots after he comes in from clearing a fresh path to the barn. “You must be the only person I’ve met who wants an unexpected guest not to do his part.”

So I put a hook and a skein of yarn in his hands, and show him how to make a base chain to start, and then the basic stitch. He looks at me expectantly, about half an hour later, after completing a single row.

“Well, go on. That’s a start. Make yourself useful.”

“You mean to say my charming company ain’t sufficient?”

“If you’re dead set on earning your keep, no. And charming is a matter of opinion.”

“Opinions have a way of changing, Miss Sterling.”

As does his patience with needlework. Rather, it expires by evening. I hear grumbling and look over to find him hopelessly tangled, with the skein somehow wrapped around his neck, and threads binding his arms together. The hook hangs from the few rows he managed to make, swinging sadly.

The glare he gives me is all the warning I need not to comment, though I can’t repress a smile. He deserves his dignity.

Once free, he stands and rolls his shoulders, declaring that a day laying down railroad wouldn’t leave a man as fatigued as an afternoon spent at crochet.

“My damn fingers are too big, I keep fumblin with the yarn… ah, forget it.”

My gaze drops to his hands; I can’t help it. They are large, but then, he’s a big man, and I wonder how they might feel if he touched me, sliding them from my shoulders to my waist, pulling me close against him. Like we had been on the horse.

Instead of brushing that experience aside, I haven’t been able to let go of it. Much too frequently, I fantasize about what he might have done had I twisted around and kissed him. To my dismay, he does still use to phrase ‘pretty girl’— when petting Ellie.

“Here.” He picks up the deck of cards I’d left on the table. “Take a rest with me, let’s play some poker.”

“You don’t want to play cards with me, Mr. Morgan.”

“Why not? You get a temper when you lose?” He grins, teasing, and I feel something like affection flutter in my chest. Affection to go along with the surge of desire I get whenever I let myself contemplate his physicality for too long. He really is looking much better lately, with ruddy color in his cheeks, and his smile, well… seeing that makes me wish he’d tease me more often, if that’s what makes him smile.

“Nothing like that, sir. I suppose I just don’t find risk very thrilling.”

“Low stakes, then, come on.”

I waver. The deck looks so small in his hand. He might not be here much longer. I could keep my secret until he’s gone.

But I don’t want to. I want to have a little fun. “Alright. Get the whiskey, would you? And two glasses. I’ll deal.”

Arthur claps his hands together with glee; excitement I’ve heretofore seen him reserve solely for playing with Ellie, though it reminds me, too, of a brief spark I’d seen in his eyes during our little shoot-out.

I sit at the table and shuffle a few times. We play for chips, an old worn set I’ve kept and rarely used. I go easy on him the first hand, put a pair of kings in front of him, and turn over a king as the flop. Don’t want him betting too heavy when it’s early.

He takes the small pot, the deal passes to him, I drink my whiskey, win the hand, and the deck is back to me.

Where I like it. The cards feel good in my palm. I like the soft _thwipthwipthwip_ when I riffle, I like Arthur’s perturbed frown when I forget myself and do a one hand flip around cut so I can sip my whiskey at the same time.

“This may be a, uh, stupid question, but I’m gonna ask anyway. Where’d you learn that?”

I only smile coyly as I deal him a card, me a card, him, me, and the two hole cards. Everything exactly where I want it. The feeling of control makes me bold; I check my cards for show. “If I go down to Blackwater or Strawberry am I gonna find a wanted poster with your likeness on it? Also, check or bet?”

He evades the question with a cautious bet. Funny, because I dealt him a pair of face cards again.

Most of all, I like the surety that once I have the deck, I know precisely what’s going to happen. And so it goes, as we alternate dealing. I make sure to let him win every now and then, but for all appearances, he’s not an idiot. Eventually (about half the bottle empty) he cottons on.

For the fourth time in a row, Arthur throws his cards down in disgust. “How the _hell_ —“

“Do I keep winning?” I have the ace and queen of hearts in my hand, and had just revealed the flop, turn, and river as the three I need for a royal flush. My pile of chips has grown significantly, while his has dwindled to a couple pitiful stacks.

He gives me a warning glare that would, in any other circumstances, make me back away.

Instead, I gather up the cards, shuffle and cut. “I’m going to deal us each a hand, Mr. Morgan. There. Now what do you have in your hand?” I gesture for him to check. “Pair of kings, yes. And my hand? Why, the aces, spade and diamond. But that’s not really fair, is it?”

Arthur looks skeptical, which I note aloud, at which point he explodes. “Well of course I’m goddamn skeptical. You cheated! I just can’t see how!”

“No.” So I do it again, but let him pick which hand he wants out of five hands on the table. Nothing for him, and for me— it’s too much fun not to sound a bit smug, and I haven’t done this in so long— “pair of fours beats nothing, doesn’t it?”

He grumbles. “You dealing seconds? You are, ain’t you. Go on, do it again.”

“I’ll do you one better, Mr. Morgan. Here.” I hand him the deck and prompt him to shuffle it, which he does with surprising deftness.

“You don’t have to pretend to be so impressed, Sterling. I ain’t a child figuring sums.”

“I can see that. Now, the cards.”

He squares them up and places them with more vigor than necessary in front of me. “False dealing will get you shot, ya know. You ever play that in front of the professionals, they’ll catch you at it.”

“No, they won’t.”

He snorts, and resorts to pouring shots. I nod when he offers me one.

The liquor burns going down, and I feel the need to clarify: “I’ve played professional tables, Morgan. I ain’t dead. Ain’t never been locked up.”

“That so? Times are changin but last I checked ladies weren’t welcome ‘cept in private games.”

I clear my throat and motion for another shot, which he pours and slides over. I slam it back, meaning it as a dramatic gesture but it really has been a long time since I played like this. The alcohol is going to my head— which is a wonderful excuse for why the hell I’m thinking about kissing Arthur right now instead of behaving properly. And why I make a ludicrous offer. “One fair game. You win, and I’ll tell you.”

He narrows his eyes. “Fine. One fair game. _I_ deal.”

“Good.” I sound cockier than warranted. “Fine. That’s good. The only way you’re going to beat me at poker is if I never get to touch the deck.”

“I take it back,” he drawls as he shuffles and deals.

“What?”

“Boasting like that is what’ll get you shot, never mind how good you are.”

I don’t respond. This time I actually have to focus, to try to bluff, since my hand is terrible— a six and a seven, non matching suits, and the community cards are no help. I pull at my earlobe, reasoning through what might constitute a decent bet that could force him to fold.

Raise, thirty five cents.

Arthur observes me with a smirk. “I was right. You really don’t have a poker face, do ya. There—! There it is! You’re blushin.”

I’m staring intensely at the cards.

He leans in. “I hear if you stare long enough you can see through em.”

It’s no use attempting to school my expression into something bland and unreadable. I fidget too much. The more aware I am of my tells, the less I’m able to suppress them.

One fair game later, he throws down his cards with a triumphant grin. “There! Trip nines. Pay up, darlin’. What’s this big secret?”

 _That I want you to call me darlin again._ “Well…” I stand up, and I’m twisting my hands in my apron again. I shouldn't have agreed to this. Arthur stands with me, and steadies me, holding me square by the shoulders. _That I want you to hold me close and growl all sorts of filthy things in my ear, that I want to feel your breath hot against my neck, and hear what you sound like when you can’t hold back anymore._

“Hey. Easy now. I been around long enough to know that look. If you can’t say it—“

“It’s okay.” I duck my head, gathering courage if not composure. “I played in disguise. As a man.”

Arthur’s eyes go wide. _“What?!”_

“Well, a young man. I went by Lucky.”

He gives a bark a of laughter. “You were a card cheat! A professional swindler!” He shakes his head, still chuckling. “Ahh, I knew there was a reason I liked you!”

“Hey! I had to make a living somehow and I didn’t want to do it on my back!” With this exclamation I feel my face go red. He’s very close, I realize. Close enough to kiss. Maybe he doesn’t even see me that way.

My heart is racing, I’m breathless as if waking from a vivid dream, though the moment still feels frozen like in sleep.

His expression softens; it almost looks foreign on his hard worn features. Something natural to him, though long out of use. He raises one hand hesitantly, then brushes a strand of my dark hair off my face and tucks it behind my ear.

“Lucky, huh?”

I nod. “Lucky I found you, right?”

“Like I said, I didn’t expect to make it. My way of life, well that’s pretty much done, and I thought I might as well jump in the grave with it.”

“Well.” My voice catches. His fingers trail from my hair down my cheek; his lips part slightly, and when I meet his eyes directly I see blue darkened to flinty grey. I know that look. Bare desire, barely restrained. “I apologize for ruining your plan.”

“You ain’t ruined nothin, darlin’.” He cups my cheek in his large calloused hand, his thumb stroking rhythmic circles on soft skin. He likes that, it occurs to me, amidst a carnal haze consisting of the urge to grab his shirt collar and press my lips to his. He likes touch, he craves it.

Which is why I don’t understand when he tenses and pulls away. As if regaining consciousness, he drops everything, steps back and clears his throat, hunching his shoulders as he turns towards the door. Something about it’s getting dark, he needs to bring the horses back in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone would like a visual idea/explanation of the card manipulation Sloan is doing, please ask and I will provide some links.


	7. Targets

__

_Too often i think about Dutch and wonder how he is getting on. I cannot hate him, but the love I felt and still feel has rotted. If i am honest it started to go bad long before what all started at Beaver Hollow. Got a feeling this will all fester longer before I am able to put him out of my mind._

**

Several years on, I will come to think of that time after our first poker game as less of an incident and more a prelude. But in the time directly following it, my perception was not so rosy, as I did not have the benefit of knowing that our association would last longer than a month.

I stood rooted in place until the door banged shut after him, at which point I hurried to change into my nightclothes and get in bed so I could pretend to be asleep when he came back in.

The next few days were tense. Not antagonistic, but tense. We could hardly look at each other, I think because if we had allowed ourselves to make eye contact, we would have repeated The Incident and then some. Perhaps Arthur thought of me as some backwoods seductress, spinning a web of charm and longing glances to ensnare him. I remember that he avoided me, but more vividly, I recalled, over and over, the visceral thrill of his hands and eyes on me.

Routine saves us. He wakes early, makes coffee, banks the fire, and goes outside. Ellie has taken to following him almost everywhere, which surprises me because she’s normally independent and stubborn. Her affinity for him serves as a reminder: however deep my doubts may go, she trusts him, and he’s kind to her.

Only once I’m alone can I sit up. Unlike Arthur, I am not eager to jump up and dress right away. It’s warm under my blankets and furs, warmer than it will be all day outside. Then again, he’s been sleeping in the corner. I can’t imagine that’s gotten more comfortable, even with the makeshift mattress we fashioned for him.

I bring him breakfast and more coffee, wherever he happens to be— tending the animals, chopping wood, carrying water. Luckily no repeats of the morning he had collapsed.

Soon we are speaking more freely again, though I can’t recall exactly how the tension broke. I am bracing myself for the moment he announces he will be going.

The once-dreaded adjustments to my daily activities are now bright points. If I’m honest I like having him around, and not just for the extra help. We eschew poker for now, resorting to dominoes on cold quiet nights, though the tiles are so old that some of the pips are completely worn off. (No further attempts at needlework.) He teases me in gentle ways. Mostly about not being able to cheat at dominoes. He mentions an old friend of his who would have liked me—

“Hosea Matthews. He would’ve put you to work in gambling houses. The man could cheat at anything.”

“Put me to work?”

Arthur clears his throat. “If you’d been part of the gang.”

The idea makes me giggle. “Is that so?”

“Sure.” He grins. “Pretty thing like you? Bring you along on a heist as a distraction.”

And just like that— a few words drawled low and slow, the intensity of his gaze when I meet his eyes—we are in dangerous territory again. As I sip whiskey some dribbles down my lip; without thinking, without looking away, I lick it off.

Arthur leans back in his seat, hooks his thumb on the buckle of his gun belt, watching me all the while.

“I ain’t cut out for the outlaw life,” I demur. I feel my face heating up and desire welling in my core. “Besides, I told you I’m a terrible shot.”

He shrugs as if he were waiting for me to say that. “I could show you a thing or two.”

**

True to his word, the very next day he brings me to a small range he had set up just behind the cabin. The targets are some scraps of metal sheeting and a few old cracked bottles placed along a bit of fence extending from when the paddock used to be larger.

It’s snowing lightly. I’m bundle up, forgoing my typical skirt and blouse in favor of trousers tucked into warm boots, a thick coat and a scarf.

Arthur keeps wiping snow out of his eyes; at my questioning he confides that he misses having a hat, but then refuses my offer to borrow mine.

“Which one do you want to start with?” He holds a gun in each hand. “The sidearm or the long gun?”

“Which one’s easier?”

He holsters his revolver. “The rifle, I guess.” He pulls the bolt to the rear and checks that the chamber is empty before handing it to me. I know that much, at least, but after my admission about being a lousy shot I suppose he won’t be taking any chances with safety.

“Alright. Go ahead and load five rounds, get into a comfortable position, and aim for the piece of metal in the center. _Slowly_. You ain’t got no one to impress out here.”

Least of all him. I do as he said, deliberate and careful at each step. The problem, I decide, as I miss every single shot I take, is that I simply don’t enjoy marksmanship.

“That’s okay. Reload and try again.”

I do, and waste another five bullets. “Remind me again why the rifle is supposed to be easier?”

“Steadier shooting. At least it’s supposed to be.” As it turns out, Arthur is not a particularly effective teacher. Either that, or I am a hopeless pupil. He watches me expend bullet after bullet, with only a comment here or there, like ‘don’t jerk the trigger’, which would be helpful if I knew what he meant by that. His only encouragement is to say that I don’t have any bad habits— “but you sure as hell don’t got no good ones neither.”

Finally he asks what exactly I’m looking at when I sight in, which is a question with such an obvious answer I wonder why he posed it in the first place.

“The...target? Right?”

“Wrong.”

“I’m not looking at the target?”

“You ain’t supposed to focus on it.”

I lower the rifle, bewildered. There are times I wish Arthur were less committed to being mysterious and taciturn, and this is one of those times.

“C’mere.” He flicks away his burned down cigarette, retrieves his journal from his satchel and sets to sketching something.

The first glimpse I’ll ever get of his intriguing journal and it’s—

“Shapes?”

“This is what you _should_ see when you sight in. Approximately.” He tries to explain, but the terms he uses make no sense. At least now I have a visual guide.

“Go on.” He nods me back to the target, and I return wearily.

I don’t want him to see me upset and frustrated, so I raise the rifle, this time with the drawing he’d shown me in mind. It doesn’t help.

I look over my shoulder at him again, this time unable to mask my exasperation.

“Jesus.” Arthur shakes his head in disbelief. “I’ve seen a blind man shoot straighter than that. We’re only twenty five yards away, any closer and you might as well fix the damn bayonet and charge the thing!”

“Well excuse me if I haven’t made a career with a gun in my hand!” I don’t know what I mean by that, other than my ears are ringing and my shoulder is sore from the recoil, and I’m still baffled about the night we played poker.

His mouth sets into a thin line and his gaze hardens. He seems to draw himself up, broaden his shoulders, grow taller. “So you know everything now, don’t you?” He stalks towards me. “What kind of fool are you, girl? Livin alone in the mountains with no clue how to shoot. You’re too trusting _and_ too uptight.”

I lift my chin. “And how am I supposed to relax with you glowering at me?”

“Turn around.”

“Why?”

“So you don’t see my ugly face glowerin.”

I do, and then his hands are on me. I’m supposed to stop hunching my shoulders, get the stock out of my armpit, _relax_.

How the hell I’m supposed to do that with his arms around me and his voice in my ear I have no idea. Plus, the impulse to reply that he ain’t ugly. Far from it. For such an intimidating man he lacks self confidence.

I take a shot, completely distracted by inappropriate thoughts about Arthur. About dropping the rifle and kissing him, or skipping the embrace entirely (since I’ve played it out so many times in my mind by now) and leading him inside and pushing him down on my bed. How it would feel to straddle his powerful legs, grind my hips against his, watch him bite his lip at that and hear him groan with pleasure—

“Breathe, Miss Sterling.”

“Pardon?”

“Breathe. Holding it makes you shaky. That’s probably why you still can’t hit anything.”

“Okay.” Breathing does, indeed help me focus a little. That is, until he speaks again.

“That’s it. In and out, there you go.” His voice is deep and rough, and I can imagine all too easily what he might sound like purring filth and praise in the same tone, were his hands to slide lower on my body. “Steady,” he reminds me. “In, out. Don’t hold it. At the end of the exhale, shoot.”

Exactly as he says.

Miss. Again. I huff, annoyed, and move to lower the rifle and turn around but he holds me in place, telling me to rack the bolt back without adjusting my position. Why? I ask.

“You wanted to learn how to shoot, this is how I shoot,” he grumbles. “Now, remember your breathing. Slow constant pressure on the trigger…”

The shot surprises me when it goes off. There’s a metallic _ping_ after the loud crack from the rifle and I know, before peering at the target—

“I hit it!”

Arthur chuckles. “That’s my girl! Dead center. Now put another one in the same spot.”

“What if I can only shoot with you behind me?”

“Then you better be careful not to get in too many situations requiring you to shoot.”

I rack the bolt, inhale, exhale, squeeze… another hit. Reload. Repeat. Five hits in a row.

It’s exhilarating. So much so that I hadn’t even realized that Arthur’s stepped back.

“Mr. Morgan?” I turn to him. He’s squinting downrange.

“Reckon that’s a good grouping there.” He gestures for the rifle, loads it with smooth efficiency, and makes all of his shots in quick succession. One bottle shatters, a second, a third, fourth and fifth. When he’s done, he hands it back to me.

“That was amazing!”

He grumbles and hunches his shoulders. “Ahh, it weren’t nothin.”

“How’d you learn to shoot, Mr. Morgan?”

It seems an innocuous question, but Arthur goes quieter than usual before answering. “Man by the name of Dutch van der Linde.” He speaks the name as if it holds some power over him. “Showed me everything I know, but he weren’t too pleased when I started out-shootin him.”

“You were naturally more talented?”

He snorts. “No. Ain’t nobody who’s born better’n anybody else. I practiced. While he’d be carousing I worked at bettering myself.”

“His name was Dutch?”

“Mhmm.”

“Was he with you and- and that feller you mentioned? Hosea?”

“Sure was.” Arthur sighs, his jaw set like he’s trying to figure out a way to avoid sharing anything else. “They— Dutch and Hosea— they were family. At least, what I understood to be family.”

“What happened?”

He scratches at his beard stubble. “Well now, that’s a story I can only tell when I’m looking through the bottom of a whiskey bottle.”

“Oh.” I smile weakly. I’d really like to grab him by the shoulders and shake all the answers out of him. “Shall I go get some? It’s a bit early…”

“Another time, Miss Sterling. I promise. Get on with your practice, now. I dare say we’ll make a gunslinger of you yet.”

**

The day after our marksmanship lesson he asks for a map and spends the brightest hours of daylight outside poring over it outside. I take that as his intention to move on soon. He is nearly healthy enough to leave. I’m sure he could make it to Calico, though I do not know if he has any money to lodge there for long or purchase supplies.

My own feelings on the matter must be put aside. He has done more than enough, and whatever unspoken debt he believes he owes me, I consider paid.

I have a more pressing issue to concern me: food stores are running low.

“I apologize for the thin broth, Mr. Morgan. Haven’t got much meat left, haven’t found any roots in my foraging either, and the chickens have stopped laying. I’ll have to kill one of them.”

He grunts, spooning the meager stew into his mouth.

“Or maybe two.”

“I’ll go hunting tomorrow. You checked your traps recently?”

I shake my head. “Few days ago. Nothing.” My heart feels like it is sinking into my stomach. Hunting is an excuse, a cover. A polite one, perhaps to spare my feelings, but a reason nonetheless.

After a stretch of silence I venture: “I hope I didn’t offend you, Mr. Morgan. Asking personal questions and the like. I didn’t mean to pry.”

He looks at me curiously. “S’alright. We all got things we’d rather forget.”

Over the course of the day I assemble a pack for him. Shel’s razor and a cake of soap, a good water skin, matches and flint, some extra warm socks I think might fit him. Plus whiskey, and more rations than he’ll need for just a couple of nights. I do it all alone, furtively when he steps out. I’ll have to hide it on Parsifal before he goes, because he wouldn’t accept it otherwise.

I tell myself I’ll be alright on my own again, though I’ll have to slaughter the rest of the chickens and take Betsy and Bingo to Calico for supplies.

I’m going to miss him. I’m already resigned to that fact. It makes the day pass in a sluggish trance. We play a few unremarkable rounds of dominoes in the evening; cards would be so much better. He might be tempted again to kiss me.

How ridiculous! Pining after a man I hardly know before he’s even gone. Perhaps it was our flirtations at intimacy, or all of my questions. We retire to our respective beds, no closer or further than before. I shouldn’t worry myself with what could have been.

Come morning, the bolt action rifle is stowed in the saddle straps, and he’s none the wiser about the extra bag, or at least won’t say anything about it. I watch him ride out only until he disappears in the trees. I am alone again. I cannot linger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My take on Arthur teaching marksmanship :) I happen to enjoy shooting irl and one thing I always miss when reading other rd2 fics is the lack of detail about firearms. I tried to simplify the descriptions as much as possible. please let me know if anything doesn't make sense.


	8. Alone

Ellie does not seem to know what to make of Arthur’s absence that first day. She sniffs repeatedly at his path to the barn, the range he had set up, and the bedding which he had left without bothering to fold it.

Such a thoughtful, helpful person, except when it comes to tidying up after himself. He always left his dirty dish on the table, too. I think if I hadn’t watched him as he ate, he would have thrown the bowl and spoon on the ground when he was done.

It’s hard not to feel similarly discarded, now that he’s gone.

How long since I had first discovered him out in the dark? A month at least. I’ll have to check my almanac. The moon’s been dark and light since then, and I’ve bled once. _That_ had been an uncomfortable four days. Changing my soiled rags and sneaking around to wash and dry them, and waving away Arthur’s questions about why I’m drinking raspberry leaf and chamomile tea while grimacing and clutching my abdomen. Truth be told, I’d make it from ginger if I could, but, like the rest of the stores, my stash is depleted.

That will go on the list for supplies to acquire in Calico. I could slaughter the rest of the chickens now, make the trip earlier than planned. That would be the prudent thing to do. 

Instead, I put it off.

The necessity of chores continues. None of them are as bearable as when he’d been here. My world is narrower without him around. The one clearly positive aspect is that at nights, alone in the dark, I can slip my hand down my body and touch myself, find relief in pleasure. Those times, it’s always him I picture, and with no trace of shame. It’s only a fantasy, anyway. That’s where I am safe.

During the days, I have too much time to think, and my thoughts inevitably circle back to Arthur. I had known he would move on eventually. Hell, I hadn’t even _wanted_ him here at first. The things that initially made me nervous about him— his history of violence, his intimidating demeanor— well, I ain’t naive enough to believe a month with me will heal him of all that. 

While I muck the stables, feed the chickens, exercise the horses, cook, sweep, and mend, I find myself speaking out loud, absently, to Ellie. Never to Betsy and Bingo, and certainly not to the chickens, whose beady eyes leer at me distrustingly. Only Ellie, because when I say ‘Arthur’ or ‘Mr. Morgan’ aloud, she perks up and tilts her head at me. I feel like she misses him as much as I do, if not more. Often, when she isn’t out roaming, patrolling for predators to bark at and chase off, she sits at my feet. Arthur had taken to grooming her— a task which falls to me once again. I set aside the scarf I’m making and find a brush to run through her thick white fur. She is patient by nature, her steady presence a reminder that I have more important things to care about than myself, and I comfort her as best as I can.

These are a bleak few days, nonetheless. I eat smaller and smaller meals, appeasing my growling stomach with ale and whiskey. Despite Arthur’s stay I still have plenty of both. 

Perhaps it’s the meager rations, too much liquor, or the weather turning— or all three— but I can’t stay warm enough. One miserable, frozen morning, I get up and decide that enough time has passed. I’m going to reclaim the bedding I loaned him. 

Still in my nightgown, I slip on warm boots to shuffle the short distance across the cabin. First I unhook the sheet I’d hung as a curtain. As expected, the blankets and furs comprising his bed are messy, to put it charitably. Not dirty, but all in a pile. He hadn’t left much else. Just some of the clothes I’d loaned him, the smaller items that were too tight and short on him. That had been a treat. Seeing him step out from behind the sheet in trousers where the hem hit at his knees had sent me into fits of laughter, which lasted until I had noticed how revealingly tight they fit in other, more crucial areas. So I don’t blame him for leaving them. He hadn’t found it quite as amusing, asking me dryly, as he did a little spin, if I’d had my fill.

With the lightness of that memory, I kneel and set to gathering and folding the mess. Pulling at the first blanket uncovers a surprise: a revolver, and underneath it a scrap of paper.

It looks like it was torn from something, probably his journal, and I flip it over eagerly. Maybe this is his way of saying goodbye. ‘For practice. Box of cartridges behind the picture on the mantel. -A. M.’

That’s it. I slump, feeling deflated. For a moment I had thought— _hoped_ — that it would be a heartfelt confession, or instructions to meet him in some town, or at least something indicating that he’d be coming back. I trace my fingers over the elegant cursive, smudging the graphite by accident. The paper smells like him, faintly, like whiskey and woodsmoke. I fold up the note and stash it in the lockbox I keep under my bed, nestling it among the stacks of bills and yellowing photographs.

Practice, he tells me. I can do that. I dress and go about my chores. Come noon, I find the box of cartridges as promised, and retrieve the gun from where I had left it on the table. I’d been passing it all morning, yearning to shirk the boring tasks for something fun. But the thought of Arthur’s disapproval helps me hold out. He had worked hard while he was here, and it wasn’t even his property. 

Revolver in hand, I head out to the range behind the cabin. It’s a beautiful piece, this gun, now that I can see it better. The metal has a dark blue tint in direct light, and the handle is an ebony inlay, carved with the likeness of a buck. I think it’s the same one Arthur had pressed on me that night the two strange men had been snooping around. I was glad not to have had to use it then. Even now, I feel shaky at the thought. At the resulting violence and gore, which Arthur was so clearly accustomed to.

It strikes me suddenly that perhaps that is what he is running from— and I’m sure he’s running from something, or someone. Some past self he wants to leave behind.

My meandering speculations do me no favors in shooting. Only when I focus, recalling his lessons about breathing, stance, sight picture, and trigger control, do I manage to land a single shot on the metal sheet. 

_Yes!_ I let out a solitary whoop, then immediately feel foolish. Arthur would have told me to stay in position and put another one in the same spot. 

Eventually my hands start to cramp from the cold, and there are more chores yet to do. I haven’t eaten today either. It strikes me at last, several hours later as I’m practicing center-dealing with a deck of cards, that it is very odd for him to have left me one of his guns. He had taken the rifle, so I suppose it’s more of a trade. Still. I don’t know what to make of it, and without anyone to talk to, my mind is free to twist itself in irrational knots around the subject. 

Meanwhile, I resist the urge to take the note out of the lockbox. If I allowed myself that I would likely fondle it until it disintegrated. His handwriting really is lovely, an unexpected counterpoint to the hands creating it. 

His hands… and there I go again, fluidly shuffling and dealing cards, with what I’m sure is a silly, vapid smile on my face, all from thinking about those hands. They were not slender or graceful, like his penmanship might suggest. Just big and blunt and calloused and surprisingly dexterous when he wants to be. I had wanted them on me, badly, still do, and this night, safe under my covers, that’s what I imagine while my fingers slip in the wetness of my arousal. How they’d feel rough on my skin, how large they would look holding my waist as he pulls my hips down to meet his. And _oh_ — the sounds he would make— low, desperate groans urging me to take my pleasure from him, his gaze never breaking with mine until my eyes squeeze shut and I—

Regain my breath. Remember he’s not here, along with the sullen acknowledgment that my own fingers don’t even come close to what I imagine. And I’m still alone in the dark. 

**

I take to carrying the revolver around on my person. It fits nicely in a disused holster I found in Shel’s old things, and Ellie is the only one who is around to witness my embarrassing failures at trying to teach myself how to quick-draw it. I think I cut a dashing figure with the addition, nevertheless. The gun belt adjusted to the smallest notch sits at my waist and lends an air of excitement to my faded floral print dresses and tatty apron. 

Yet another item for the Calico list. If I could be certain that bandits wouldn’t ransack my place while I was gone, I might stay a whole month in the mining town, but for an out-of-the-way place, Bluff Cabin seems to be attracting trouble this winter— a trend that is borne out once again, on the fifth day of Arthur’s absence.

It is late in the afternoon, the sun weak and about to drop behind the mountains. I have a yoke across my shoulders, a full bucket of water on either side and I trudge back up the hillside from the creek. As I crest the hill, someone calls out.

“You there!” 

I’d been staring at my feet; the shock nearly makes me lose my balance. Water sloshes on me and soaks straight through to my skin and good god it’s freezing. Granted, I can see my breath in the air, and I’d had to break a crust of ice on the stream to get to flowing water. 

There are three well-dressed men at the front door of my cabin, which I notice is hanging ajar. _I_ hadn’t left it like that, not unless I wanted to let snow drifts in. 

“Shit.” I mutter. There’s nothing for it now. They’ve seen me and they know I’ve seen them.

With my head as high as I can manage, I approach them. One, a man with sleek black hair and an oily triangle of a mustache, steps in front of me. I move to go around him, and he angles himself to block me again.

“A moment, sir. I need to put this in the water barrel inside before it freezes.”

His lips curl smugly, and he steps aside as if he’s doing me a gentlemanly favor. “Of course, of course, Miss…” his voice is as unctuous as his appearance, and I ignore the question in his tone, pushing past him and mounting the steps to my front door.

I hear footsteps in the snow and then the plank floor behind me. They follow me in, and the three of them, in this cramped space, set my nerve on edge. 

Providing my real name seems like a bad idea, when I don’t even know who they are, or why they’re here.

“J.J. Winthrop.” The greasy one pulls off his gloves and holds out a hand to me once I’ve dumped the buckets in the barrel.

I don’t take it. “Are you lost, Mr. Winthrop?”

He lets his eyes wander over my body, and he smiles in that patronizing way again when he gets to the revolver slung at my hip. He pulls out a chair and sits at the table without me inviting him. 

“I hope not, Miss. Perhaps you could enlighten me.”

I risk a glance at his companions, one of whom is closely inspecting the items on my mantelpiece. The other, a brawny fellow who looks a bit like an overstuffed scarecrow, is not so inquisitive. He seems satisfied trying (and failing) to light a corncob pipe. I’m worried he might set himself on fire.

“Is this not Bluff Cabin?” Mr. Winthrop asks, more pressing this time.

I stare at him, my mouth dry and my heartbeat thundering in my ears. No way to cheat at times like this, no sleight of hand to arrange things to my favor. So I simply nod. “It is.”

“And you are…?”

Not my real name, anything but my real name. In a split second panic, I blurt: “Eunice. Eunice DuBois.”

Mr. Winthrop’s horrible little mouth twitches underneath his mustache, and he pronounces me and the name, “lovely. Simply divine. Miss Eunice.” He smacks his lips as if he can taste something delicious. “My associates are Randolph and Crenshaw.” He waves at them with his gloves, without really indicating which is which. “I see, had we arrived a few minutes later, we would have interrupted your bath.”

Bile rises in my throat at the implication. At the humorless little chuckle he gave when suggesting it, and the wolfish way he’s looking at me. His eyes are blue, like Arthur’s, but hold none of the same kindness. How would Arthur deal with these thugs?

A fistfight, at the very least. He wouldn’t be so cordial, wouldn’t tolerate the presumptuousness and leering. I’d be surprised if he could make it through a conversation without drawing a gun on them. None of that is an option for me.

I sit at the table. “What bring you fellers out this way?” Now I can twist my hands in my skirt without being so obvious about it. The damp spot hasn’t quite dried yet and it’s making me chilly.

“I’m so glad you asked, Miss Eunice.” Over his shoulder, I can see Randolph or Crenshaw— whichever is the fat scarecrow— pawing through my desk drawer and coming away with a book of matches. Apparently none of his own did the trick. He looks like a Crenshaw to me. Randolph, who has a shrewd look to him despite a round rosy face, finally goes to help the oaf. “You see, we— my associates and I, on behalf of our employer— are looking for someone.”

I regard him as innocently as I can manage, picturing my trusty deck of cards and the soothing count. “You’ve found someone.”

“Indeed I have. But you’re alone, out here, aren’t you?”

It’s a dangerous question, no matter how I answer. Alone, and I’m vulnerable to their whims. I can’t know if they’re looking for Arthur, or those two men he killed that night. Mr. Winthrop and company could be the search party. “Ain’t no one but me and my dog. Two horses as well.”

“A young lady striking out on her own. That is mighty independent of you.” He smirks and gestures to Randolph and Crenshaw, who have availed themselves of my fine brandy. “Isn’t that right, gentlemen!”

Crenshaw grunts. Randolph purses his lips and stares too long at the corner where, only several days earlier, Arthur had slept. It’s empty now. Thank god I’d remembered to put the bedding away. There’s no indication now that anyone had been there, but he lingers on the spot all the same. Maybe his upturned little nose can detect things by smell. Maybe it’ll lead him outside and he’ll sniff his way down to where we buried the bodies. Bodies which, I realize with a jolt, had been dressed similarly to my current guests. Fine black jackets, over red vests, starched white shirts and neat cravats. I don’t know how they aren’t freezing. 

“I do alright,” I offer cautiously. 

“I believe you do! What with a piece like that on your hip.” Mr. Winthrop gets up, takes the brandy, and after a swig, adds, “I reckon a little thing like you runs the risk of being knocked backwards shooting such a powerful gun.”

I don’t answer. He only wants to hear himself talk, or is trying to draw me into something incriminating and I won’t play at that.

“Ever had to use it?” 

“Hardly. Mostly to frighten off wild animals and such.”

Mr. Winthrop makes a little ‘hmm’ sound and then lets us all marinate in an uncomfortable silence before launching his next attack. “I don’t suppose, Miss Eunice, that you’ve seen any people come through here recently. A couple of our other associates went missing a few weeks back. We found their horses wandering back into our camp, unharmed, with no sign of the riders.”

I wonder if he can see my face going white at this line of questioning. They know. They have to know something. Other than Belmont there isn’t anyone else within fifty miles or more. “How… odd.”

“It is a most alarming matter. Two able-bodied men, two valued employees of our agency, simply gone.”

“The bears can be aggressive, you know. This far up in the mountains. The _Grizzlies_.” 

“True. But their horses were unharmed, and you said yourself you are able to frighten off wild animals.” His mouth curls unpleasantly. “With a revolver.”

“Yes.”

“May I see it?”

I hesitate. He knows very well that I want to say ‘no’. That I _should_ refuse, like I should have refused to entertain this entire farce of a polite conversation. 

The muffled sound of barking coming from outside halts all of us, and saves me. I stand and break from them, striding out the door. I see right away that it’s only Ellie. She’s doing her duty, guarding the barn. 

Mr. Winthrop and his cronies follow me, seeming to forget about the revolver in favor of making a few mocking comments about maybe getting to see these ferocious bears I was talking about.

“Only coyotes— see there, tracks in the snow through the trees?”

But they aren’t looking. They unhitch their horses, and each man dons a bowler hat. Again, strange attire for the climate. I wince when Mr. Winthrop mounts a bay mare who has long gashes along her flanks, and Randolph and Crenshaw sit too heavily in their saddles.

“Oh, Miss Eunice— one last thing. The fellow we’re looking for. His name is Arthur Morgan. Most concerned citizens are eager to know who it is when we say we’re looking for someone. I’m sure in the excitement of unexpected company it simply… slipped your mind.” Wearing the same gratified smirk he’d had since inviting himself in, he touches the brim of his hat. “Good day.” He digs his spurs into his horse, taking the whip to the poor creature before even giving it a chance to respond.

I watch them go, longer than I need to, with my hand on the revolver as soon as they’re out of sight. I probably wouldn’t be much good with them if they did come back. My hands are trembling and I suddenly feel like crying. Arthur had been right to ask what kind of fool I am, trying to play at homesteading. For a long time, as long as it takes the sky to darken from grey to pink to star-dotted black, I sit on the front steps, numbing my hands by tracing patterns in the snow, and staring in the direction they’d ridden off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> howdy y’all, Arthur has big manly meat hands and no one can tell me otherwise. Ps. This chapter was almost titled ‘Sloan Alone’.  
> seriously though, I wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone who has been reading so far, and I especially appreciate everyone's kind and insightful comments. I realize this fic isn't the typical 'fun times with the gang' and it requires some patience... thanks for taking a chance on it :)


	9. Ride

_There are two things I recognize in ~~Sloan~~ Miss Sterling. I understand her impulse to be good. But her baser urges, the ones she tries to hide, the times she curses and cheats at cards and looks me in the eye like she knows exactly what I’m thinking— those resonate. I have to wonder if she recognizes anything similar in me._

**

That night another storm howls through, a nasty one that rattles my cabin like it’s a monster trying to get in. I curl up, shivering, and Ellie even tucks her great furry head under my arm, snuffling and whining until I pet her to sleep.

It takes me the better part of the morning the newly deposited snow. I sustain my energy thinking about the remaining chickens, and how delicious they’ll taste in a hot broth. That’ll be it, then. He’s been out for nearly a week, and I can’t afford to wait longer. Once I’ve finished the broth, I’ll pack up and head for Calico.

Reestablishing the path to the barn, however, reveals disaster. As I shovel enough snow out of the way to wrench the door open, I’m struck with the absence of sound. The door creaks, and the horses stamp and snort, but that’s it. No clucking. No skittering feet or beating wings. Ellie is at my heels, and she tries to twine through my legs like she’s still a puppy, which only puts me off balance. 

“Ellie!” I grab for her, but she trots past me too quickly. Her nose is to the ground and in her avid focus she continues to ignore me. “Ellie!” I follow her to the enclosure where I keep the chickens, dreading, and discovering, the worst.

Except for a few bloodied feathers, the four that were left are gone.

“Fuck.” I hiss, then repeat it louder, because Arthur isn’t here. He cursed plenty around me. Fact is his vocabulary was bluer than a clear sky, but I had to be a proper lady. Not anymore. 

I rub my eyes, then retrieve a broom, stomping harder than necessary wherever I go. I’m exhausted and hungry. It’s a fight not to give in to my frustration. To just sit down and cry. I’m not prepared to leave today, but I’ll have to. Ellie and the horses need food too. 

I find, as I go about cleaning up in the barn and muttering bad words, that my three visitors had fed and watered their horses from my supply as well. 

“Goddamnit!” That’s it. I throw down the broom. I just needed one thing about this to be easy. If I can’t feed the horses, I’ll have no chance of making it out of here. I stride out of the barn, loudly indulging in another round of swearing, because I’m getting a goddamn bottle of whiskey for a meal and then I’m packing up and going. I’ll ride through the night. I’ll eat my own boots if I have to, I’ll—

“Miss Sterling?”

“Fuck! Arthur!” I clap my hand over my mouth immediately before any more words can escape. In my huff I hadn’t even heard hoofbeats.

Sitting high on Parsifal, he rides up to me, an easy grin spreading across his face. “Well it’s nice to see you too,” he drawls, shaking his head in amusement. “You got anymore in ya or is that the end of the show? ‘Cause I gotta say, I ain’t heard a lady curse like that outside of a— are you alright?”

I can’t decide exactly _what_ I am right now. Relieved? Shocked? Embarrassed? Whatever it is, it’s something other than ‘alright’ and it renders me still and mute while he dismounts until his boots sink into the snow.

I hug him. The only thing I want to do is hug him, so I do, quietly, taking a few steps and throwing my arms around him. He stiffens in the first moment— even seeing it coming I bet he didn’t expect it— but softens in the second, bringing me in closer. His bandolier pressed against my face isn’t the most comfortable thing, nor the rough canvas of his coat. I don’t care. The broad expanse of his chest and shoulders envelop me, his breathing a rhythmic rise and fall as gentle and steady as a tide.

I could be drawn out with it. He rests his cheek on top of my head as if to say ‘as long as you need’. I could let myself be taken away.

I can’t. I won’t. I drop my arms and pull back, finding Arthur giving me a quizzical look and then we both start talking at the same time:

“Did, uh, did something happen—“

“Were you able to catch anything—“

And interrupt ourselves, and restart at the same time. “While I was gone—“ “I thought you were—“

_“Sloan.”_ His concern commands my attention. “To hell with all that. Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

“No. No I’m okay. It’s just— you’re back!”

He scratches his neck with his thumb, something I had noticed he usually does when he’s trying to think of a clever response, but can’t. “Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” Of course. _Why wouldn’t he come back?_ As if it’s the most natural thing in the world. I am saved having to lie through my teeth when he continues. “Didn’t find much, though. Couple of pheasant but they’re pretty scrawny. It’s near barren out there. I must’ve rode out sixty miles, and it seems to me something or someone’s been scarin’ up all the best game and drivin the rest into hidin.”

I peer around him and see the two carcasses dangling rather pitifully across Parsifal’s back. 

Arthur sighs. “Look, I’m real sorry. I’ll pluck ‘em and clean ‘em if you want.”

“How old are they?”

“Found ‘em yesterday. In this cold they’re as good as fresh.”

“Okay. Good.” I waver about what I say next. Assuming he’s going to come to Calico with me seems risky, but then again, _why wouldn’t he?_ I lift my chin and meet his eyes directly. “Leave them on your saddle. And don’t unpack. We need to set out for Calico today.”

“Well okay then,” he nods, and hitches Parsifal before catching up with me as I make for the cabin. “Why?”

I fill him in on the events as I pack. First the demise of the chickens, hence the urgency of our trip. Leave it to Arthur to ask if Ellie’s doing alright. In my upset I hadn’t even thought of that, but as he explains, she might mope for a while since she’s so protective.

With my bags ready, we make for the barn. Second, the strange, rude visitors. He has a lot of questions, the first several of which are repeated variations on whether I’m alright and if they hurt me, though he does notice his revolver at my hip and nods at it approvingly.

“I’m fine, really.” I pause, having just caught a whiff of myself while cinching some of our supplies on Bingo. We had agreed, without discussing it, that we would share Parsifal again. “I do need a bath. When they surprised me yesterday I was about to take one, and then I just— I was worried they might come back.”

Arthur nods understandingly. “Yeah, I do too. Does this town you’ve been talking up have a decent hotel?”

“Two, actually. Last time I was there, anyway. Seems like every time I visit they grow another building.”

“These fellers who were here—“

“Winthrop, Randolph, and Crenshaw,” I supply.

“Right. Did they mention they might be riding into town at all?”

“I don’t think so, no.” I know what he’s asking. What he’s probing at. Whether they had specifically been looking for him. I have a choice here. I am always careful when making choices, and this one requires consideration. It requires care and if Arthur is the man I believe he is, he’s going to blame himself when I tell him, he’s going to be ashamed and apologetic, which is what I’m afraid of. More selfishly, I can’t withstand another stretch of worrying that he’s going to leave. 

He grumbles acknowledgement and has the good sense to ask, as we’re double checking everything, if I remembered to bolt the doors.

“Ahhhh shit. Goddamnit.” I catch myself and meet his eyes guiltily. “Uh. Gosh darn it. Forgot.”

He regards me with skeptical amusement. “Is there a reason you only get angry and cuss when you think I can’t hear you?”  
“What? Just now, that was an accident. I don’t—“

“‘Cause that ain’t the first time.”

I open my mouth to dispute him, despite the fact that he’s right, and while we circle back to lock everything he lists off instances from the past month. All manner of mishaps, from dropping a bucket on my foot, to Parsifal chewing on my just-washed hair, to tripping and falling face first into a snowbank while bringing Arthur his breakfast. “Fine, fine. I only try to hide it because it’s unbecoming. And it ain’t proper.” 

He snorts. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but lots of folks got no compunction about picking and choosing which parts of being proper suit them at any particular moment. Besides, you ain’t hurting anything by it, least of all my delicate sensibilities.”

I bite the inside of my lip to keep from returning his lopsided smile but it doesn’t help. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh. Okay. Good, then.” We return to the horses. “As a matter of curiosity, just how delicate _are_ your sensibilities?”

He shakes his head, grin widening. “Well that depends. How long we got to Calico?”

**

Four nights, is the answer. Four cold nights and five slow days of riding, leading Betsy and Bingo while Ellie walks beside us. Arthur was right. She _is_ moping. She stays closer than usual, more alert to anything she perceives as a threat, and even ingratiates herself to Parsifal, who consents to her attention by lowering his head so she can lick his nose. 

“Mr. Morgan,” I whisper, patting his arm. “Mr. Morgan, look.” He’s roasting a rabbit over the fire, one we’d caught by accident since it had been stupid enough to run in front of our horses. It’s pretty mangled, but he had joked that it was simply pre-tenderized. I’m not about to complain. The pheasants lasted barely a meal between me and Arthur and the dog and I don’t think I could go another day subsisting on alcohol and crumbs.

“What is it?” He looks up at me, and then follows my gaze to where Ellie is currently rolling in the snow and Parsifal is bobbing his head and stomping excitedly. “Huh. Took me a week straight to break that horse. Thought he was gonna trample me outta spite.”

“He was wild?”

“Yes. Least that’s where I found him. Ain’t never met such a stubborn creature before, but I, uh…” he trails off, voice rough. “I wouldn’t have made it without him, if he hadn’t taken a liking to me.” Arthur sounds like he can’t quite believe that anyone or anything would appreciate him enough to show him basic kindness.

I want to ask a thousand questions, still. The more I get to know him, the more my curiosity about him intensifies. How he came to be sick and injured and wandering in the dark, and just how much trouble he was in that a wild horse was his salvation, instead of any of those old friends from his gang. “He still tries to bite me when you’re not watching, you know.”

“That’s ‘cause you spoiled him with peppermints and apples.” He rotates the spit on which the rabbit is skewered. “And you kept callin him ‘Bitey’ or Parsley or some other nonsense.”

I laugh quietly, holding my hands to the fire to warm them. 

“Ohhh, go ahead. You laugh all you want, but animals, they got a sense for these things. They can tell when you don’t respect them, when you’re scared of them. They know. Some of them. Some are morons like this rabbit.”

“So when you met this horse did he write out Parsifal in the snow with his hoof?”

Arthur gives me a dry look and heaves a sigh before answering. “It’s music. Name of an opera. And before you go thinking I’m all hoity-toity cultured, I’ll have you know, it was the only recording I liked enough to remember the name of.”

“Recordings? How modern!”

He grunts. “I guess. Feller I told you about, one who taught me to shoot—“

“Dutch?”

“Mhmm. It was him who owned the machine and them wax cylinders. Used to play music in camp...” he lapses into silence and then asks me to take over the cooking so he can put the tent up. 

“I can do the tent,” I offer quickly. I’ve pushed him too much, I fear. Though I had thought they were safe questions, nothing too deep or prying, somehow we ended up heading towards the painful part of his past anyway. Arthur deserves his dignity. 

My dignity, however, is tested by the tent. On a smooth patch of hard-packed snow, I lay out the canvas, lines, and stakes, and find a couple of tall sturdy branches. Unfortunately, I can’t drive the branches deep enough into the snow for them to stay upright, until I strike upon what I think is a brilliant idea: bracing them each with heavy stones at the base. With the poles standing in place, I gather the tent itself and attempt to throw it atop the poles, like I’m spreading a blanket out on a bed. It doesn’t work. The fabric is heavy and waxed, which in the cold is made very stiff. Then I figure out that I can drag it over. At this point I’m huffing and puffing and sweaty and when I finally get the material over both upright poles, one tilts under the weight and falls over. 

“Damnit! Fuck. Fucking balls cunt shit.” I grind out, trying to flex feeling back into my cold hands. Arthur had made this look so easy last night, and then he hadn’t even slept in it, instead announcing that he would keep watch by the fire. I’d found him curled up with Ellie, with a crust of frost on his stubbly beard.

“I can pretend I didn’t hear that if you want.”

“Oh!” I whirl around. “I, um, I’m having some difficulty here.”

“That’s one word for it.” He runs a hand through his hair, which has gotten quite long since I found him; it’s brushing his collar. “Come on, let me show you the trick to this.”

The trick, it turns out, is that it’s much easier with two people, and we finish just as it’s getting too dark to see. We go to the fire and sit side by side, sharing the rabbit. It’s stringy and charred but still good. I dig a little box of salt out of my pack, then offer it to Arthur. Ellie comes over to claim her portion, and stays to beg for scraps while we both lavish her with pets and attention. It’s a nice sort of silence we achieve, keeping each other company. I don’t want it to end, but the fire is burning low and after my third consecutive yawn, Arthur urges me to turn in.

“Go on, Miss Sterling. No need to stay up on my account, get yourself to bed. I’ll keep watch.”

Despite being pleasantly full and drowsy, I have trouble sleeping, as I did the previous night. Everything is too cold, the ground is too hard, even with my bed roll. And I worry about Arthur. Both times I had considered telling him to bring his bed roll inside the tent. There’s enough room for it. I doubt he’ll invite himself in. After an hour of tossing and turning, I decide that I’ll do it if I hear him start coughing again. Of course, I have other, more selfish reasons for wanting him beside me, but in the end it doesn’t matter. All is quiet and I drift off to uneasy dreams in which I’m chasing Arthur, only for him to turn around, revealing himself to be Mr. Winthrop.

**

“You’re driving this morning.” Arthur tells me when I ask why he’s had me sit in front of him on the saddle rather than behind.

I’m not exactly thrilled to take the lead. I had enjoyed wrapping my arms around his midsection, and wondering just how much he felt my breasts pressed against his back. More than once, it crossed my mind that if I lowered my hands, I might discover if my proximity had any effect on him. Could he really be that different from other men? That stoic? Or worse, for me, uninterested. 

It’s not worth dwelling on. I’m in front this morning, and he wants me to take Parsifal’s reins. I’d awoken when it was barely light out to find most of our camp packed up. Arthur had looked more worn than usual, as if his age lines had deepened overnight. 

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I ask, nudging the horse to walk. “He’s stubborn with me, we won’t make very good time.”  
Arthur’s arm around my waist holds firm. “The fact he ain’t bucked you off or kicked you means he likes you.”

“He _tolerates_ me.”

“You expecting a luncheon invitation? He’s a damn horse. A little faster now.”

“My feet don’t even reach the stirrups.”

“That don’t matter. Mine do. Gentle kick with your heels, don’t be scared. I got you.”

I can feel that he does. The entire broad expanse of his chest and shoulders is pressed against my back, after he shifts to adjust his bandolier out of the way. His crotch is against my bottom, I can feel that, too. I consider what would happen if I just— _wiggle_ a bit. 

Arthur’s arm tightens at my waist and he makes a choked sound that reverberates through both our bodies. A twist of heat climbs through me. My senses are suddenly alight, and all too responsive; I tamp down a shiver that has nothing to do with the cold weather.

Parsifal moves at a trot, seeming a little testy about it. “Give him—“ Arthur clears his throat, “—give him his head, not too tight on the reins.”

I let them hang limply. “I don’t think he likes this.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re riding like you ain’t never sat a horse before. You gotta match his gait.” His free hand drops to my hip, and his voice is low and rough in my ear, telling me to sit up straight, loosen up.

_Fuck._

I adjust, angling my hips and letting myself post. Contrary to Arthur’s statement I’m a fair rider, but I’m a little distracted at the moment. As my attention wanders, I imagine Arthur letting his hands do the same. With the one at my waist, he could grab my breasts, one at a time, squeezing and enjoying the weight of them in his hand. He’d want my blouse off, he would growl, but still, over the fabric, roll the buds of my nipples between his fingers, and kiss my bared neck when he heard my breath hitch. 

And his other hand. The one still on my hip. The one ostensibly guiding me to move in time with the trot, except I can feel his hips, flush with my ass, moving too. That hand could drop.

My heart is thumping in my ears. Another ripple of arousal pulses through me, radiating outward from my core in waves to make my extremities tingle. Arthur is very real at my back. _That very real hand could drop._ He could slide it down a few inches and press his big blunt fingers to the source of my heat. Just through my trousers. I wouldn’t care. It would be enough. I know I would grind against them, helpless and wanton, arching to his touch.

I must be a sight at the moment. It’s a good thing he can’t see my face. My cheeks will be flushed, my lips plump, eyes glassy, and if he slid his hand underneath my clothes he’d find my cunt slick and ready. 

Again, _fuck._

Then we come to a narrowing path, slow to a walk, and I feel it as our hips rock together— I feel _him_.

There’s nothing else it could be, not his his gun belt or buckle or an oddly positioned pistol. Arthur’s hard cock is pressed against my ass, thick and full.

“Easy, now,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s cautioning me about the terrain, or whatever the hell else is happening between us, but I swallow a moan and answer breathlessly. 

“Uh huh.”

_He’s not immune_. He’s not a statue, despite his stoic demeanor. It’s a private thrill, but one I savor nonetheless. One I hold in mind as I shift my weight ever so slightly in order to rub against his erection. I hear a strangled groan behind me and his arm tightens at my waist. 

I don’t know quite how long we ride like this. An hour? Three? Long enough to wind my need unbearably tight, and when we dismount for a rest, I’m close to breaking. My thighs are sore, trembling from the tension, and every sensation makes me hyperaware of my body. Arthur won’t even look at me, so I guess we’re going to pretend nothing happened.

When we mount up again, I’m behind him. We ride well past dark. I wake up in the saddle with my arms around him, only to find that he has dozed off, too. Luckily Parsifal is still on the trail, Betsy and Bingo plodding after. Drowsy and near-blind, we hitch the horses, lay out our bed rolls, and sleep under the stars for a few hours, all without a word between us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about lack of journal entry and any formatting issues— i’m Posting on mobile, will fix and edit better next week when i get back to computer.


	10. Questions

_As predicted, I have made a fool of myself, and I suspect this will continue as a trend.  
The woman is almost enough to distract me from the impending allures of Calico. What I will find there, I do not know, nor who might know me._

**

“How long you figure we got?”

Arthur’s rough bass wakes me. I’m behind him once more, a position we tacitly agreed was safer when we set out just before dawn. 

I blink, looking left and right, bleary-eyed. It’s light out now, all white and grey. Trees hem us in from all directions. I can’t see the mountain range to the north and it’s too overcast to determine our heading by the position of the sun.  
Another bout of snow readying to beat us down, more like than not. Time was I’d be making this trip and others like it on my own, and I’d be fine. I _had_ been fine. Just last winter, in fact, and winters before it, on more arduous paths than this, dressed like a boy, of course, with my breasts bound and hair tied back, just me and Ellie and the pack animals. 

I’d had setbacks and missteps, but I had managed. I had managed without Arthur Morgan, and despite the tension between us I am glad he’s with me. 

“Until Calico? Another night, I‘d say.” I hadn’t told him how happy I was to see him return from his hunting trip. Even had the threatening men not visited, even though Arthur had come back empty-handed. Even if my whole, tiny, insular existence had been progressing perfectly, I would have been just as pleased to see him. Perhaps I wouldn’t have flung myself into his arms so dramatically like a besotted school girl, but still. Happy. 

Ellie trots back towards us from farther up the path. I’d like her to stay closer in case of any encounters but it seems her instinct to range ahead cannot be suppressed. Arthur digs in his satchel and finds a piece of jerky, which he leans down to present to the dog. “Think I heard wolves last night while you were asleep,” he explains as Ellie eats from his hand, “but they didn’t get no closer than howling.”

“You don’t think they’re hunting us?”

“Nah. Guessin she drove them away.” He nods at Ellie, who is already patrolling out front again. “I’d give her more treats if our stock weren’t runnin low.”

“She’ll be alright. I’ll have to sneak her into the hotel room with us, so she’ll be plenty pampered when we get there.”

“Hotel room?” 

“Well… yeah. You got a problem with that?”

He clicks his tongue for Parsifal to go faster. “No. I ain’t got a problem with that, but a man like me— that is to say, I’d be just as comfortable gettin drunk and passin out on a table in the back of the saloon. I reckon that’d be the cheaper option.”

“I can pay, Mr. Morgan,” I offer with trepidation. Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t want him to feel beholden to me, and sure enough, I hear him grumble, so I add, “and if you don’t care for the idea of me spending my own money, I’ll win some at the poker table. Then you’ll be spending someone else’s.”

He sighs. “Darlin, I already owe you about a hundred times over.”

“So what’s a hundred and one?”

He laughs at that, a deep, wonderful sound that lifts my heart. “Someone else’s, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“You know, that is really a fantastic leap of logic. Very modern. Robbin some poor fools all while makin ‘em believe they got a chance at robbin you.”

I find myself grinning too. I know he’s only teasing, and if anything he sounds a bit excited. “You could be in the game with me. I could deal you the winning hand, draw less suspicion that way.”

He hums, as if thinking it over, and then asks lightly, “will I get to meet the infamous Lucky?”

I can only giggle, strangely delighted that he remembered, and that his reaction hadn’t been to chastise me, but rather amused curiosity. 

**

Whatever unease that remained between us as a result of my turn at the reins fades away along our ride that day, even as the sky darkens too early and snow begins to fall. We can’t seem to avoid the flirtatious tones that seep into our languid conversations, and it’s hard to summon the energy to pretend like I’m trying to stay well-mannered. Besides, it’s much more fun to coyly ask when I might take the reins again, just for Arthur to clear his throat and grumble. I can feel his back flex as he shifts in the saddle. One moment my arms hardly reach all the way around, and the next, they _really_ don’t reach and good _lord _I’m sweating again.__

__It is mouth-wateringly easy to imagine _him_ shrugging his suspenders off his shoulders, undoing his shirt button by button… but what’s beneath? I know what men look like, of course, but I want to see him. The broad chest and shoulders, which I’ve merely felt, his stomach and back, his arms— all well muscled from years of work and hardship, and he likely has scars, maybe bullet wounds as well. I want to know where he’s most sensitive. Which spots, when licked or kissed or bitten, might elicit a moan. What makes him squirm and arch his hips. How long his fraying patience would last before he begs me for more._ _

_Down, girl._

__I inhale deeply. The frigid air is a good, centering shock. I refocus, letting my eyes start to adjust to the dark._ _

__We push forward in twilight as long as we dare, passing up several good campsites as the snow whips from gentle into something that finally necessitates our halt for the night. The horses had been laboring, Betsy and Bingo lagging behind, and Parsifal had taken a dangerous false step on a fallen branch hidden in a snow drift._ _

__I check my pocket watch as we dismount. Barely a quarter after five. As early as it is, time is precious, and we both know it._ _

__Arthur clears snow from a flat area and digs a pit in order to kindle a fire while I set about feeding the horses and gathering snow to melt for water. Icy blasts of snow impede us both, and the wind carries Arthur’s frustrated shouting to my ears. We end up trekking a little farther from the main path, up a hill, and we find a hollow a the base of two enormous pine trees. There is shelter from the wind and room enough for all the horses, us, a fire, and the tent. By the time everything is set up we are chilled to the bone, exhausted from the frantic scramble to establish the camp before nightfall._ _

__Shivering, we huddle in front of the smoky fire, eating what little is left of our rations. Ellie stays close and lets us comb clumps of snow and ice from her fur._ _

__“That hotel don’t sound so bad right about now,” Arthur says, holding a cigarette to the fire to light it.  
I nod, unable to answer without my teeth chattering. “They got warm baths. The couple who own it cook hot meals, too, served downstairs in the sitting room for fifty cents a bowl.” _ _

__“In front of a big fireplace?” He sounds nearly as wistful as I feel._ _

__“Oh, it’s grand. Too grand for the town. You ever been to Strawberry? Stayed at the inn there? It’s like that.”  
“Sure.” And that’s all he has to say on the matter, apparently. Again, with the laconic mysterious wanderer thing. He’s staring into the fire, cigarette hanging from his lips, his expression distant._ _

__I’m beginning to thaw out, enough to feel my fingers, but it’s still too cold to sleep. I mention this all to Arthur, since we are on the topic of reminiscing about comfort. His solution?_ _

__“Whisky.” He holds out a bottle. Says it’ll warm me enough that I can fall asleep without so much trouble. No mention of himself, of course. I’m starting to wonder if he ever really rests. If, perhaps, his case of consumption was exacerbated by his insistence on being useful, even before he met me. I think he might work himself to death for the right person, or the right cause._ _

__I accept and take a drink. He’s right. It _is_ soothing. A little lick of flame down my throat followed by a radiant warmth. “Poker?” I suggest a game, not really expecting him to agree. But he nods, and asks what we’ll play for. A fair point, as I hadn’t brought chips. With none on hand, we play for pebbles, and— I hazard another suggestion— questions._ _

__“Questions?” He frowns. I hand him the deck of cards from my jacket pocket so he can check that it isn’t marked or stacked. I owe him that. If I were him I wouldn’t trust me either._ _

__“Mhmm. Win a hand, you get to ask a question.”_ _

__“And I gotta answer true?”_ _

__Funny that he assumes he’ll lose. “We both do. Otherwise there’s no stakes.”_ _

__He looks over at me, his jaw set, like he’s trying to discern what kind of trick I’m playing. “Fine,” he sighs. “I find you got cards hidden up your sleeves and this is the last game. We ain’t playin again.”_ _

__I hold up my hands. “I never cheat my friends, Mr. Morgan.”_ _

__He grumbles and deals and wins the first hand. I’m a little nervous of what he might ask me, but it’s benign, if a little uncouth._ _

__“How old am I?” I repeat. “Why, I never!” I pretend to fan myself out of indignation. So the liquor might be going to my head. It’s fun to watch him flinch as his eyes go wide, but I do let him off the hook. “Twenty-five.” I watch for his reaction, and it really is remarkable how he can go from stuttering to teasing in such a short time._ _

__“Twenty-five? Practically an old maid!”_ _

__“What?! How about you, then, old man?”_ _

__He grins. “What you doin askin questions? You ain’t won yet.”_ _

__That changes with the next round. Thirty-five, he admits in a resigned tone. I would have guessed older, but either way it doesn’t bother me. I like that he’s weathered and coarse and a little too clever for his own good. I think he thinks he’s past his prime, which I would like to tell him I disagree with, but he didn’t ask my opinion._ _

__We trade questions by the light of the fire. Most of them are innocent, a few veer into personal territory. His journal comes to mind first, and to my surprise he actually pulls it out of his satchel and hands it to me._ _

__“You don’t mind?” I ask before flipping it open. I had just answered his question about where I had grown up in more detail than necessary, and I don’t want him to feel as though I’m pressuring him for more._ _

__“It’s alright. You made Norfolk sound like a decent place. Might make a visit some day.”_ _

__I glance up at him. “I told you it’s all brothels and flop houses and ship yards.”_ _

__“Like I said. Decent place.” He gives me a smile, though it’s strained; his shoulders are hunched and I see misgiving in his eyes, the vulnerability he’s opened himself to by showing me his most private possession._ _

__The page I open to is a full sketch of a town labeled ‘Blackwater’. Subsequent pages reveal astute studies along with simple impressions— a few lines to denote fluffy sheep and a fence in a field, accurate depictions of medicinal herbs, labeled in his neat looping script, portraits and landscapes. Everything, really. An illustrated book of his life and all the things he’s seen. “Arthur…” I breathe, nearly overcome. Had I found this on his person the first night I ever saw him I wouldn’t have believed it was his, but now that I know him, his skill at observation isn’t much of a surprise. He really does see beauty in everything except himself._ _

__“Load of horseshit, ain’t it?”_ _

__I snap it shut and glare at him. “No. I think it’s wonderful. You’re very talented.”_ _

__Bemused, he swigs some more whisky. “You got a strange manner of complimentin a feller.”_ _

__I reluctantly hand the journal back, along with the deck. “It’s your deal.” It doesn’t really matter. We’re tipsy enough to swap questions as we play, or at least I am, and he’s willing to go along with it._ _

__“Who’s Mary Linton?” I ask as I pick up my cards. “The woman in your journal.”_ _

__Arthur pauses, fiddling with his pile of pebbles, though we had abandoned betting with those about half a bottle ago. “I was, ah, hopin you hadn’t noticed that page.” He sighs, scratches his neck. “I suppose I can tell ya. She was… my first love. That shoulda been all the warning needed that it would never work out. I was a fool. Always was, around her, it was like my brain shut off and I could only think with my co—“ He coughs guiltily, cutting himself off._ _

__I’m pretty sure I know what he was about to say, and raise an eyebrow at him. “So you ain’t married? Never took a wife?”_ _

__"No one would have me.”_ _

__“Not Mary Linton?” I make a point of checking my cards, though I don’t really register what they are, between the pull of the liquor and the conversation._ _

__“I asked. I weren’t well-bred enough for the likes of her.”_ _

__“Did she love you back?”_ _

__Arthur stares at me darkly as if trying to discern what sort of trick I’m playing. He shrugs like there’s a huge weight across his shoulders. “I guess. She loved an outlaw. I tried. Tried to be good, do right by her, but honorable intentions don’t mean much when your whole life is built on thievery.”_ _

__For a minute there’s nothing but the fire crackling and the wind howling and Ellie snuffling as she sleeps. “I’m sorry, Arthur,” I say, and instead of reassuring me— it’s alright, it’s nothing, that life is over and done— he runs a hand through his hair, his gaze on me unwavering, unrepentant._ _

__“What about you?”_ _

__I glance at him from beneath my eyelashes. “What about me?”_ _

__He snorts. “Don’t give me that bullshit, darlin’, don’t you dare. I just gave you an earful of drama. You’re unmarried and livin on a mountain. There ain’t no feller in your life?”_ _

__Somehow we got here. Somehow I came to be sitting by a fire opposite Arthur Morgan, during a blizzard, a little drunk, and considering how to respond to questions about my impending spinsterhood, when all I would really like to do is kiss him. We could, either of us, lean in first. We are close enough. There are only cards and pebbles and a whisky bottle in between._ _

__“No one,” I affirm, raising my eyes from my cards and regarding him evenly, though my heart is thumping in my ears.  
His voice pitches lower. “So you mean to tell me you ain’t never had a man.” He doesn’t look away, and arousal flares to life in my core, a pulsating awareness of everything he does, everything I feel, all hyper focused. _ _

__My breath catches. “Well— no.”_ _

__He takes a long _is that all you’re gonna say_ drink, and I feel myself blush, more than from just the whisky. _ _

__“I mean, I’ve had a man. Or, a man’s had me, rather. Never mind.”_ _

__He quirks a smile. “Sure.”_ _

__“But I’ve had suitors. None of them pleased me.”_ _

__This time his eyebrows go up. “You don’t say…”_ _

__“Oh, forget it.” I throw down my cards, folding on a hand that could have won, if I weren’t so flustered. “That’s enough of my past, I’ve tasted enough of my own foot tonight.”_ _

__“Alright.” Arthur gathers up the cards, sounding reasonably contrite. “Alright. Didn’t mean to, uh, upset you, Miss Sterling.”_ _

__I take one more sip of whisky, about to say what he hadn’t earlier, the placid, empty comforts of ‘it’s fine’, even though it isn’t. I’m not. I’m not upset with him, but my body is awake, humming with unmet need when I should be too tired to consider such indulgences. And he still— _still!_ — keeps me at arms’ length. Won’t call me nothing but ‘Miss Sterling’, and has his fun teasing me. Nothing more. I’d better try to get to sleep before I make a bigger fool of myself. _ _

__“Sloan.”_ _

__The grit in his voice gives me pause. I sit back on my heels, somehow closer to him than before; our knees are almost touching and I could put my hands on his shoulders. “Yeah?”_ _

__“Did you really think I wouldn’t come back?” He asks haltingly, barely able to meet my eyes._ _

__“I— why?”_ _

__Anger flashes across his face, anger and impatience and shame. He is accustomed to threats getting him what he wants, and he despises himself for being so effective at it. He stares down at the cigarette in his fingers, takes one more drag, then tosses it in the fire. “You know why.”_ _

__I scoff. “Arthur, is it really such an intellectual exercise for you to believe that people would want you around? You’re smart and funny and kind and handsome and you work hard without being asked. In spite of being asked not to, sometimes, for your own damn good.”_ _

__His jaw twitches at ‘handsome’. “You’re avoidin the question.”_ _

__“What?”_ _

__He levels his gaze at me in warning. “You folded. I won.”_ _

__“I—“ am nearly in his lap. I realize this around the same time he does, and I suppose I got there in my huff over chiding him for being such a likeable person. He kicks one leg out straight, bracing behind himself with one arm. He lifts his chin, almost like a challenge. A dare for me to go further._ _

__“So I owe you an answer,” I finish lamely. Still avoiding the immediacy of our situation._ _

__His eyes glitter in the firelight. “Yeah.”_ _

__“I had my doubts.”_ _

__“And now?”_ _

__Now if he leaves without me I’d be liable to chase him down, but I keep that private. He’s going to make me come to him first, so I do. I lean in, closing what spare distance there was left, and kiss him._ _

__He inhales sharply— surprise? Disgust? Did I read this all wrong?— then brings his hand to cradle the back of my neck, pulling me further in._ _

__His lips are chapped, so are mine, we both taste of whisky. We don’t care. We seek warmth in each other, comfort and reassurance and whatever fleeting pleasure can be found._ _

__Arthur has a directness in his manner, once I’ve shown him what I want. He tangles his fingers in my hair, his mouth is lush and hot as his tongue brushes mine._ _

__Inwardly I am trembling, curling and twisting like a scrap of paper thrown to a flame; desire rises in me again, faster and fiercer than before. His beard is coarse against my face, a counterpoint to his tenderness. I like it, bring my hand up to cup his scruffy cheek. He moans into my mouth at that, a helpless, needy sound._ _

__Snow falls over our heads. We savor each other languidly. He seems to revel in every touch, in the softness of it all. As if he’s starved for it._ _

__This kiss, this surging moment of connection is what we both crave. For different reasons, maybe, and I am far from truly knowing him but even now, so close, I am still fascinated with him._ _

__He nips at my lower lip, a little bolder than I would dare. It feels like another challenge. Another question._ _

___How tangled together shall we become? We are ignited, so how shall we burn each other down?_ _ _

__It’s too much. I can’t answer. Breathless, we break apart. Not far. He rests his forehead against mine, letting his eyes close._ _

__“Darlin’,” he rasps, inhaling in a shuddering breath, a second, another, until he is steady. “You gotta warn me when you’re gonna do somethin like that.”_ _

__I swallow a laugh. “Staring into your eyes longingly, that weren’t warning enough?”_ _

__He lifts his face to look at me, something playing in his expression which I can’t quite place. Amusement or lust or regret or he’s just as conflicted and confused as I am or all of the above. He still hasn’t let me go. I don’t think he wants to. “It’s late, Sloan.”_ _

__Hearing my name like that— a note of desperation, of warning— I bite my lip at the shiver that courses through me, which has nothing and everything to do with the fact that we are each other’s refuge in a blizzard. “Yeah.”_ _

__“You should get some sleep.”_ _

__The words _I want more than this_ swim into my consciousness, and almost surface as speech. “Yeah,” I repeat, exhaling as he pulls away and stands up. It’s too soon. I don’t want to sleep. And yet, I’m not sure I could have handled more. Maybe it’s for the best. Without Arthur so near, that sublime tension drains away. It’s too cold. I shuffle over to my bed roll in the tent and lie down. Even with the liquor I won’t be warm enough. Can’t imagine Arthur will fare much better. _ _

__I am dizzy, the ground is rolling beneath me in a lovely way, like a tide rocking me to sleep. Too much whisky. I’m alone in the tent, tossing and turning. My bed roll does little to soften the ground or blunt the cold. I raise my head after a few minutes to see how Arthur is getting on. The idiot is laying out his bed roll by the fire, just like the previous three nights._ _

__“Arthur.” I call out softly. He looks up, silhouetted against the low dying light._ _

__“You alright?”_ _

__“You can’t sleep out there.” I hear, more than see, the mechanisms of his hesitation. He stays crouched and silent. I persist. “It’s too cold.”_ _

__He coughs. “I’ll be fine.”_ _

__“I promise not to lunge at you again,” I offer lightly._ _

__He shakes his head with a chuckle, rising and gathering his bed roll even as he does. “That ain’t what I’m concerned about.”_ _

__I move over to make room for him. Ellie pads over at about the same time, and lies down in front of the entrance to the tent; Arthur carefully steps over her and arranges his bed next to mine. He settles alongside me at a minimal distance, about a hand span between us. Soon his breathing deepens, though I can’t hear it well over the wind buffeting the tent._ _

__Sometime during the night he rolls over, throws an arm around me and pulls me closer, or at least, I thought he did.  
Come morning, he’s shaking me awake, with a word about making time now that the storm has cleared. I sit up, seeing that most of the camp has already been packed up. _ _

__“And don’t dawdle,” he adds. “Coffee’s gettin cold.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait! thanks to those still reading <3


	11. Calico

_A map can hardly do any frontier town justice, by which I mean it’s one straight line and there is no tolerance for deviation._

**

The Main Street in Calico might as well be the only street in Calico, and it has been reduced to a muddy trench lined with unappealing slush. We ride in around two in the afternoon, descending a final hill and rounding a last bend to be greeted with this less than picturesque tableau. 

Locals stare us down, at least one for every building and storefront we pass. The livery is at the far end of the street, past the general store, the barber and the doctor (the same man), the two hotels, the gun store, the tailor, the brothel, the other brothel, the Calling Card saloon, the sheriff, the post office, the little schoolhouse, the church. And a gallows, which looks weathered and oft-used. From its cross beam hang two desiccated, twisting corpses. The sight of them turns my stomach, and Arthur must feel me stiffen in discomfort because he quickly becomes uncharacteristically chatty, drawing my attention to the other side of the street, where there are men clustered around a boy hawking the day’s newspaper.

For an isolated town, it’s real cosmopolitan, in Arthur’s opinion. There are enough people to give the impression of hustle and bustle, it even has poles bearing telephone wires, all the way up here in the mountains.

I suppose it is. Where has he been, then? What’s he comparing this place to? I’ll have to ask later.

Arthur slows Parsifal to a moseying walk. Avoids other riders, a couple of passing wagons, a coach. Lets everyone who wants to get a good look at us, and those who do have not a smile among them.

“Friendly folks, ain’t they?” Arthur quips to me in an undertone.

I feel like I should apologize to him for the sorry state of this outpost. It was never exactly friendly when I’d visited before, but it had also been too underpopulated to feel threatening. “For every one of them scowling at you up here, there’s another two meaner ones down in the mine right now.”

Arthur greets the butcher with a nod and a booming ‘howdy, mister!’, which I think is quite a bold thing to say, considering the fellow is as burly as Arthur and has a cleaver in hand.

Despite the cold reception, the change in surroundings is a welcome one for me. The whole day, the entire ride, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about last night. Not just the kiss, though remembering his lips on mine, and the little sounds he had made—that all occupies a large portion of my consciousness. But the rest of it. Our conversation, which left me reeling, and the unmistakable blaze of desire in his eyes every time he looked at me, and the promise of more. 

I’m sweet on him, no doubt, which is a very stupid thing to be, even if he insists that he won’t be moving on any time soon. Like he said, he came back. He came back for me. I can’t count on that happening again. I shouldn’t. 

All in all, I need a better distraction than the monotony of trees in every direction. I suspect Arthur does too. The relative luxuries available in town should help with that. For my part, I’m eager to see new faces across the poker table, and Arthur, though he never complains about it, has been rubbing his neck and lower back when he thinks I’m not watching. Well, a real bed is in his future. If he tries to refuse I’ll suggest he repay me with more riding lessons.

A stablehand— a boy around the age at which Shel exists in my memory, cusping on fourteen— approaches us as Arthur guides our procession into the stables.

“Lookin to board your horses, mister? Or just need feed?”

“Full board. For, uh…”

“A week.” I murmur.

“A week.”

“You got it, mister.” The boy gives both Parsifal and Ellie a wide berth in order to reach Betsy and Bingo. Smart kid. The dog won’t hurt him unless provoked, but in the presence of so many unfamiliar things, Parsifal is testy. “We turn the horses out once a day. That stallion is gonna be extra, seein’ as we’ll have to keep him in his own area.”

“Fine.” Arthur dismounts first, then helps me down. My hand feels so small in his— or his feels so large supporting mine, as does his other at my waist, steadying me. When my feet are on the ground, I glance up.

“Thank you.”

“It’s nothin’,” he replies gruffly. His touches linger. They’re unobtrusive, not at all demanding. He’d been doing it all morning, perhaps without realizing it. His hand brushing against mine as he handed me a cup of coffee, or resting as a reassuring weight at my shoulder or the small of my back. He’s blushing, and it looks to be the sort of flush on pale skin that extends down his chest.

Before I can rein in my imagination, the curiosity flashes across my mind: how hot his bare skin would feel, were I to trace my fingers along his jaw, down his neck, along his collarbone and chest. What it would taste like.

Damnit, now _I’m_ blushing.

Yes, a few rounds at the poker table, and separate rooms for both of us. 

The stablehand comes back for Parsifal. Arthur releases me; I quietly pass him some money so he can pay the hostler, and tell him to meet me at the Gemtown Hotel. 

“Gemtown, alright. I’ll be a moment with the supplies.”

“Gemtown,” I repeat. “Not Jewel Inn.”

He glances up in question, but affirms anyway. “Gemtown. I got it.” 

I touch Arthur’s arm in parting, then set out to trudge through the muck, alone. Ellie stays with him. I had been looking forward to wearing skirts again, but that may have to be put on hold. I sink into the ground ankle-deep in some places, feel the cold sludge seep in. After securing our lodging, baths will take top priority.

Jewel Inn is the lesser establishment, situated across the street and I pass its dilapidated facade and hear the women posted outside on its porch giggling at me. They’re all done up, gaudy in painted faces and richly colored dresses. Ruby, emerald, sapphire. 

That’ll be all the distraction Arthur needs to forget about me, I think bitterly. And if it’s not the pretty whores that ensnare him, there is still the allure of easy money to be had: the wealth of the mine attracts all manner of men, from honorable laborers to reprobates to lawmen and peacekeepers.

I climb the step to Gemtown Hotel, walk through the big double doors and across the rug, my soggy boots squishing with every step. The proprietor behind the desk, who I don’t recognize from my previous stays here, winces when he sees me.  
First the whores, now this guy? I must be in worse shape than I thought, and Arthur still kept finding excuses to be closer to me. 

“I’m looking for two rooms.” I put a stack of bills on the desk, but keep my hand on them, just enough to show how much is there. His demeanor changes instantly. 

He stands up straighter and manages not to look like my body odor personally offends him. “Of course, Miss…?”

“St— uh—“ I nearly correct myself to ‘Bell’, then think better of it. Arthur will know to find me under Sterling. “Sterling.”

“Of course, Miss Sterling. What will be the duration of the stay?”

“A week.”

“A week. Wonderful. I’m Cal McBride.” He glances up and gives me a limp smile before going back to writing in the guestbook. 

Cal McBride is a little grey man. His hair could be blond or grey, his suit brown or beige. If I had to shut my eyes and answer whether he has a moustache or not, glasses or not— I don’t reckon I could say. I’m concerned I will forget his name, or who he is, and so I repeat it in my head a few times— Cal McBride, Cal McBride— before it occurs to me to pursue the question of why I didn’t recognize him in the first place. 

“What happened to the couple who used to be here? Mr. and Mrs. Ramos?”

Mr. McBride blanches, but quickly recovers his professional demeanor as he comes around the desk, fumbling with a large ring of keys. “Why, road agents done for ‘em, Miss. Set upon their wagon comin’ up from the station house between here and Mercy. Terrible business.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t known them well, but they had always treated me kindly. I follow the new owner when he beckons. Down the first floor hallway, to the two rooms at the end. “Were the robbers caught?”

He shakes his head. “I’m afraid not. Likely they still walk as free as you and me. It was only a fortnight past we got the news.”

“Deep winter makes men desperate,” I allow, but he doesn’t seem to hear.

“These two rooms are the only ones I’ve got left, and they adjoin by that door there. It’s a good location, you see, being at the end of the hall like this, it’s quiet and private, and that last door out in the hallway opens onto the back porch.”

That would be useful. An easy way to have Ellie sneak inside with us. “But they both got decent beds?”

“Ah, no. The other is a sitting room, but it does have a chaise-longue, and I can certainly provide extra cushions and furs…” He trails off hopefully.

It isn’t much of a choice, but the alternative, across the street, promises to be noisy and dirty. Such are the perils of letting rooms rent by the hour.

I tell him I’ll take the rooms, and I’d like baths drawn besides. One for me, one for Arthur, who should be along any time now. I don’t wait up for him, and when I emerge clean and refreshed after a long soak, dressed in clean undergarments and a dress, I find him similarly transformed. His cheeks are rosy, his hair wet-dark. It’s long and brushes his shoulders, staining his cotton undershirt to translucency where it touches. 

Careful. It would be so much easier— okay, a little easier— to remain unaffected if he didn’t look at me like that. As if he’s looked at me every day for twenty years and never got tired of it.

“Hey pretty girl.”

A blush overwhelms me, and I quickly look around for— “Ellie? You found the door out back?”

His smile widens, the warmth giving way to mischief. “She’s in the other room.”

“Oh. _Oh._ I, uh… see you’ve put everything away. Thank you.” 

“I ain’t got nothin’ clean.” He plucks at the thin white shirt. I can see mud stains on his trousers.

“We’ll go to the tailor. Now,” I add, before he has a chance to protest. “It’s late in the day.” And if we allow ourselves to stay here, I cannot promise myself I won’t get wrapped up any tighter in Arthur Morgan.

**

The tailor is in no hurry at all when we arrive. He is sitting cross-legged on a stool, sipping wine from a short faceted glass and perusing a Wheeler, Rawson & Co. catalogue with disdain. My first thought is that he is foppish and so well-groomed as to arouse suspicion. Shel would have chided me for such unChristian sentiment.

Monsieur René LaSalle is his name, and we may call him Monsieur LaSalle. He tells us this as though he’s being generous; any concern on my part about how Arthur and I should introduce ourselves dissipates. Monsieur LaSalle does not care. Arthur shoots me a look and asks under his breath, “you sure there ain’t anybody else sellin clothing around here?”

In his inappropriate clothing Arthur had drawn some attention as we made our way back up the thoroughfare, the direction we’d ridden in from, and Monsieur LaSalle has no hesitation sharing his opinion about the gentleman’s attire.

“A wild animal attack, non?” He ushers Arthur back into a corner of the store, stands him on a dais surrounded half by age-spotted mirrors, and begins taking his measurements. 

Arthur frowns, shifting unhappily. I think he’d like nothing more than to smack Monsieur LaSalle’s hands away and stride out of the shop. “Weren’t nothing but time on the road.”

“And along this road, you encountered a bear, did you not?” He passes the tape measure deftly under Arthur’s arms and around the broadest part of the chest. “Your appearance is an affront to anyone who sees you.”

“Would you prefer I say it was brawling?” 

“Non.” Says Monsieur LaSalle lightly. “Fisticuffs or other quarreling are frowned upon here.”

I don’t expect any of that to go over well with Arthur, but I sure don’t want to get in the middle of any argument that might be brewing. I turn away, to wander as much as I can within the small confines of the shop. 

As much as I can tell from first impressions, it bears Monsieur LaSalle’s touch everywhere. Its decor and wares are far too refined for a place like Calico. It outshines its neighbors in every way. Hell, even the sign outside proclaims ‘Atêlier LaSalle’— a word I’m only familiar with thanks to my time in Saint Denis.

One must then wonder, I muse, running my hand over a dress of gold and blue jacquard, how its proprietor came to reside in Calico. His sort of personality would be more welcome in a large city. Folks there aren’t so sensitive to rudeness or foreign accents. But there is certainly a market here for his fine creations, at least among the women of the camp. The thought sours my mood. All I can see of the pretty silks and velvets now is how they would get soiled dragging in the mud, and the pairs of dainty heeled shoes and slippers up on the shelves above would never keep my feet as warm as my boots do. I fish around in my pocket to withdraw the deck of cards I’d stashed earlier.

Arthur will be free to visit the women tonight or any other night, of course. He might dissemble on the subject of it if I brought it up, but I know enough about what men are like. If he wants to go it won’t be me who stops him.

“...girls down the street charge twenty cents for that.” Arthur’s amused drawl makes me turn to see what developments have occurred over in the corner. Monsieur LaSalle is measuring Arthur’s inseam.

“And yet you will be the one paying me,” the tailor rejoins.

Arthur grunts. “Ya know, I was acquainted with another one of you Frenchmen once. An artist. Painter by the name of Charles 

Monsieur LaSalle sniffs. “Indeed.”

“—and he was just as much of an unbearable little shit as you are.”

I tense, my hand pausing mid-flip. A couple of cards flutter to the floor— a clumsy error for me. I pick them up and move to a small rack of plainer cotton dresses. Arthur had spoken with no malice, but with those who don’t know him his arch sarcasm must be seldom appreciated. Monsieur LaSalle laughs, though. He moves to his work table. He makes notes of sizing and fabric swatches, and offers Arthur a cup of wine (it is accepted graciously) and bids him browse the shop. I would have liked Monsieur LaSalle to offer me a cup of wine too. 

“Now I ain’t a fancy fellow,” Arthur warns. 

“Be assured I would never mistake you for one.” 

“I got no need for a suit.”

Monsieur LaSalle withholds his opinions on this topic, directing Arthur to the small section of premade garments that might fit Arthur’s broad chest and shoulders. Whatever else he selects will be tailored and delivered later. For myself I choose a few muslin dresses and add them to the account. Arthur will settle it when we leave— with cash I had pressed into his hand before we came inside. It was too much, I knew. Flagrantly too much, enough to make his eyes bulge. I had sidled up to him, close, closer, coaxing him with a sweet smile not to refuse. 

Still, now, he’s picking cheaper things. Sturdier things. That’s alright. He checks the seams on a vest by yanking viciously. There is the unmistakable creak of threads ripping, and he replaces it with a scowl. I do notice him linger over a nice hat. He even tries it on when he thinks I’m distracted, and it suits him. 

The day’s light is beginning to dim. Arthur takes some things behind a curtain in the back and emerges a moment later. Fully attired he cuts a dashing figure. Even Monsieur LaSalle acknowledges him with a nod. He’s chosen a shirt the same shade of blue as his eyes, like faded cornflower, a sheepskin vest over, with dark indigo trousers and sleek new boots. Monsieur LaSalle stirs himself to produce a woven poncho.

“Made by the Wapiti. For the cold. Warmer than anything I can make and this, how you say, shithole town has no furrier.”  
Arthur dons the poncho, flips one side over his shoulder, and straps on his gun belts.

It takes him cinching the well-worn leather and at last glancing up to meet my eyes for it to hit me. 

This is who he is. Who he _really_ is. This is the man Mr. Winthrop and his associates are looking for. Not the desperate- to-be-helpful farm hand, but the gunslinger silhouetted on a ridgeline before riding out of sight. The realization settles in my heart as heavy as a weight sinking to the bottom of a river. The ways he moves make sense now: his posture, his habits, his swagger. I think I may have been wrong to trust him, and foolish to hope for his permanence.

He twitches the poncho back down, concealing his hands and yet leaving them free. It occurs to me that he could draw his pistol and fire, all in a hidden movement. I look to Monsieur LaSalle again. Could he really just be an out-of-place fop? I’ll have to reassess my impression. Maybe he had led a previous life as a member of a particularly stylish outlaw gang.

“Well, Miss Sterling?”

“Well?” I echo, stolen from my reverie.

Arthur makes a vague gesture, and I can’t tell if he’s asking me to admire his outfit or conclude our business here.

“You wanted to tour the, uh, saloon?”

“Yes. But you need a hat.” I hope he will choose the wide brimmed brown one and for a moment he seems to consider it, but surreptitiously checks the price again and passes it up for a black one that is rather less striking. He slips another note to the tailor. 

Our purchases will be conveyed to the hotel, free of charge, and brought to our rooms— tomorrow or the day after next, but no later. They shake hands. Then Arthur holds the door for me, and arm in arm we step into the night.

**

It is to the West that Arthur’s thoughts turn, once we have concluded our business with the tailor. I know because he speaks of it, tangentially. As we amble along up the way he points out things that remind him of other things, which he had seen once in the state of Oregon, or up in Wyoming, out in California. 

There are pretty little Spanish churches out there, where the monks might offer a meal to a stray traveler. Gambling and drinking to be done in single room trading posts, too small for any Law to bother with. And up in the hills wolves still roam on land barren of gold and too rough for cattle.

I hear longing in his voice. Not for those places, nor for the things, but for something else about it. I don’t know well enough to say. The journey, perhaps. The long and winding paths he’s taken there and back, lonely dust-roads like threads through all the country between here and there, and a canopy of seed pearl stars picked through the darkening eastern sky.

As much as I yearn for his company, for it to be more than company, I can’t keep him here. I don’t want to be the reason he stays. I won’t be, I remind myself. Remember what he is, what he was like when you first found him. Who he is when niceties and culture are stripped away: an outlaw and a fugitive. 

He is dangerous.

He will claim what he wants, and he will be pragmatic doing so.

The Calling Card saloon is roaring by the time we mount its front steps. As we do, a man bursts forth from the batwing doors and swerves stumbling past us.

“Careful now,” Arthur calls after him. But the drunkard has pitched face first in the slushy mud. None of the hard-faced folk congregated on the wide porch rush to help him, except for a lad who I recognize from earlier at the stables, I think.

“Good kid.” Arthur responds to my questioning glance. “Nathaniel. All but owns the livery. From what he told me, we’re like to find his da in here most hours of the day.”

“At Blackjack?” I cast around the cavernous room, hardly able to take everything in. There are two levels: a wide ground floor and an indoor balcony surrounding it, everywhere crowded with all manner of people. Miners and fur trappers and businessmen and cowboys. Considering this town is forty miles from the nearest rail stop, it’s surprisingly popular.

“At the bar.” Arthur has to lean close and speak loud in my ear to be heard. He leads me to the bar now, his hand at my back. I am glad for the din, though I can tell it puts him on edge— not that I find it pleasant, really, but it will be a distraction to other players, and a very effective one. If I get into the right game tonight I could earn back all we spent on clothes and then some. The prospect of a good mark has me practically giddy, and I don’t try hard to conceal my excitement. Only channel it to smile charmingly at any man who meets my eye. Another strategy. The beaming, lucky ingenue. I’ve been here before, I’d told Arthur, but not for a long while since, and never as a young woman. Never as myself.

When he finally gets the barkeep’s attention, Arthur orders for both of us. Two whiskeys, though I would have rather tried one of the more unusual drinks, which are advertised on a big sign behind the bar. Gin fix 15 cents, rum fix 15 cents, fine brandy 25 cents. No matter. I’ll save the odd drink preference for when I come back to play as Lucky. Lucky, the feller who always takes a gin fix will be a better disguise than Lucky, the pretty feller who can’t grow a beard.

“You hungry?” He asks me. “Want something off the sideboard?”

I peer at the sign again, looking for what food might be on offer, but all I can see in that regard is ‘no free lunch’. “No, thank you.” I sip the whiskey and twist my free hand in my skirt. “I’d like to find a seat at one of the games, if you please.”

He frowns, and the frown deepens when the fellow over at the piano strikes up a lively tune. “I don’t mean to offend, Miss Sterling, but I don’t see any ladies sittin at poker here.”

“I know.” I pull him away from the crush of people at the bar, farther back and nearly under the stairs. The air is too thick in here, hot with the odors of grease and smoke and a whiff of vomit. Near us, in the shadows, a man has a woman against the wall, his face buried in her neck. She’s writhing, and I can’t quite tell if it’s an act or not. I suspect the man would keep going even if she were distressed. I suspect no one in here would stop him. She catches my eye over the man’s shoulder, impassive for a moment, and then shrieks, laughingly trying to push him off. 

I look away when he rucks her skirts up. All I can think about is how filthy his hands must be, pinching like claws, his cloying breath issuing from that rotting mouth, and how can she tolerate him near her? How can she not feel tainted by his grotesque embrace? 

Even only as a spectator I feel violated, and I don’t mean to think of him but I do; the memory of his face shimmers into focus in my mind, like a reflection in a pond.

“Miss Sterling?” 

I flinch when I feel Arthur’s hand on my back. “Y-yes?” His touch and my reaction to it both shame me, for reasons I can’t explain.

“You got any sort of plan you’re inclined to share with me? How’s this gonna work?”

Cards. Right. I’m here for cards. “I, um…” don’t have a plan. There aren’t any women actually sitting at the game tables. Instead they lean over some men’s shoulders, or else perch on laps, giggling and offering encouragement. “I don’t know.” All of a sudden I feel utterly deflated. Exhausted from the day’s ride and the shock of transitioning from the serene isolation of the wilderness to this. It had all been so exciting a few minutes ago.

“Alright.” Arthur slugs the rest of his whiskey. It makes his voice even deeper and more soothing. “Alright. Come on.”

“What? Where are we going?”

He takes me by the elbow, gentle yet firm. “We’re gonna have fun.”

“Fun, Mr. Morgan?” I only want to return to our rooms, check on Ellie to make sure the loud sounds of modern life haven’t scared her too much. 

“I’m gonna play me some poker, and you’re gonna make sure I don’t lose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thank you to those still reading. Thank you for coming back. I needed to take a break from fandom, and for several months I struggled to continue posting my writing at all, but I missed this story. I have the rest of the drawn journal entries, which i will upload as soon as I recover my tumblr account (which i was using to host the image files).  
> As always, I welcome concrit, and if you would like to chat on any topic, my discord is @outtricking

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea kicking around for several weeks since I finished the game, and finally got around to putting it down on paper. Essentially, it's my way of dealing with my feelings about Arthur dying, so I figured a good fix-it romance would make me feel better.  
> Also, I'm trying to write in first person POV instead of second person, which is new for me.  
> As always, I welcome and appreciate feedback.


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